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REMARKABLE: OCCURRENCES 


BY 


BEVERLY CARRADINE 


Author of ‘* Golden Sheaves,” ‘‘ Gideon,” ‘““Jonah,”’ ‘* Pen Pictures,” “‘ Pastoral 
Sketches,” ““A Journey to Palestine,” ‘* Soul Help,” ‘‘ Heart Talks,” 
“ Sanctification,” ‘The Second Blessing in Symbol,” ‘ The 
Better Way,” ‘* The Old Man,” “* The Bottle,’’ ‘Church 
Entertainments,” “‘ The Lottery,” ‘‘ The Sanc- 
tified Life” and ‘*‘Revival Sermons.”’ 


CHICAGO 
CHRISTIAN WITNESS COMPANY 
1902 


CopyrIcHT, 1902 


CONTENTS 


THE STRANGE CASE oF Dr. BrRoap 
A PRINCE IN ISRAEL 

THE WARMED SERPENT 

THE Two LETTERS 

THE RESTORATION OF A PREACHER 
A DrvoTep WIFE 

A CLERICAL FRAUD 

A REMARKABLE CONVERSION . 

A SUDDEN RECOVERY 

THE FAT OF THE LAND 

He Took THE Wrone Roap 


A SKETCH OF A CHILD 


A BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING . 


THE FALL oF PRIDE 
THE MAN IN A Bog 


A LIFETIME MISTAKE . 
ili 


397143 


XXVII. 
XXVIII. 


Tuer BULGER FAMILY . 


A Human CycLone er 


A STARTLING CONFESSION 


Tue History oF A PRAYER — 

A MIRACLE OF GRACE . 
; 

Tue Last WARNING . 

THE Upwarp Loox r 

THE Power oF A DREAM 


A Nigut VISITOR . a 


REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


I: 


THE STRANGE CASE OF DOCTOR BROAD. 


HE title “Doctor” as used above was not a medical 

but a theological designation. The subject of this 
sketch was a preacher. He had been D. D.’d and 
LL. D.’d and was about forty years of age-when we 
first saw him. He always wore the regulation clergy- 
men’s coat with its single row of buttons and long 
skirt, carried an ebony cane in his right hand, or 
hooked with its curved handle to his arm, while the 
left hand clothed with one glove held its mate folded 
up nicely in the same palm. 

Black-haired, black-eyed, with glossy Burnside 
whiskers, and fine erect figure, he was a man who im- 
pressed everyone by his very presence. When in addi- 
tion we mention that he had a superior intellect, and 
whatever he said on platform or in pulpit was thought- 
ful and well worth remembering, it can easily be seen 
how and why he took a prominent position speedily and 
naturally in the assemblies and conventions of his 


Church. The chairmanship of committees seemed to be 


397143 


2 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, ee 
given to him as a matter of course, and when he arose 
to speak in the annual gathering of the preachers on ~ 
matters of church business, it was noticed that not only 
the delegates listened but the president or chairman of 
the entire body always fixed his eyes upon the speaker 
and heard him silently and thoughtfully to the last 
word. 

Besides the man’s intellectual and linguistie gifts, he 
possessed a ihost gracious and ingratiating manner. He 
was cordial to everyone alike, seemed to know every- 
body, and from the frequent handshakes that he gave 
and received, it was seen why the right glove had to 
be carried in the left hand. Meantime, while open 
and kindly to all, there were different shades of treat- 
ment given to those of different ages and classes and 
characters, which showed the discriminating eye and 
mind of the man. To the old he showed that respect 
and attention which is so grateful to people in that time 
of life; and to the young an affability and interest which 
was not less pleasing and delightful to them. His bear- 
ing to rich and poor, to the scholarly and ignorant, was ~ 
just what it should have been, and was in the judgment 
of many beyond criticism. 

As we are writing of a very strange case, one of life’s 
mysteries in fact, it is well for the reader to note care- 


fully each expression we use. 


THE STRANGE CASE OF DOCTOR BROAD. 3 


As a preacher he was always edifying; as a pastor 
diligent and attentive. His congregation was devoted, 
we came very near saying worshipped him. His lead- 
ing members were simply wrapped up in the man. He 
baptized all their babies and married all their sons and 
daughters. He was continually “dined” by his friends, 
graced all their state occasions, and never seemed 
blander and more delightful than at such times. 

At these great dinings, where the company sat at 
the board from two to three hours, where there were 
seven or more courses and wine throughout, Doctor 
Broad drank one or two small glasses without any scru- 
ple and never dreamed of denying the fact. Afterwards 
he would retire to the library with the gentlemen and, 
while smoking a cigar with them, would enter into dis- 
cussions concerning the leading questions, problems and 
events of the day. 

The Doctor also smoked at home in his Study, and 
likewise at his Conference. He was a man who never 
concealed anything he did. He did not, indulge the 
weed to what is called excess, but smoked as a rule 
three times a day. On social occasions he increased 
the number to the fourth or fifth cigar. It was also no- 
ticeable that he used the best Havanas. 

“He was repeatedly seen in attendance upon the 
County and State fairs. He seemed deeply interested 


= er aul 


4 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, 


in the products of the farm and factory, and all the 
works of human skill and ingenuity. Once he was 
seen watching a horse race near the grand stand. 

Doctor Broad was a great lodge or fraternity man. 
He had gone as far in Masonry as possible and stood 
very high in the estimation of that body of men. He 
seemed to take a genuine pleasure in these associa- 
tions, and when he was in his regalia, and figured 
prominently in one of the uniformed and brass-banded 
processions, while he always conducted himself with 
great dignity, yet it was evident that he was delighted 
with the whole thing. He seemed to be in his element. 
The portrait of himself which he most prized, and 
which was hung up over the mantel in the parlor of the 
parsonage, represented him all covered and glittering 
with the showy dress of some high office in the Ma- 
sonic fraternity. 

He never opposed any of the fairs and festivals which 
his leading lady members saw fit to have in his ehureh. 
He attended, them all, and beamed pleasantly and gra- 
ciously on everybody present. 

It was commented on freely that Doctor Broad never 
had what is called a real revival in his different charges ; 
and yet he always brought up every collection in full, 
and had such additions each year that the church kept 
up its financial and numerical strength. Moreover, 


THE STRANGE CASE OF DOCTOR BROAD. 5 


the leading society people of the town always came to 
hear him, while prominent professional men, lawyers 
and doctors, and the gifted and brainy tribe of the com- 
munity thickly sprinkled his congregation. For another 
preacher to arise in Doctor Broad’s place on some Sab- 
baths was the signal for a number in the audience to 
withdraw. 

And so the Doctor went on his way until he was a 
eray-haired man of sixty. The Burnsides were white 
but the expressive black eyes glowed the same and the 
fiery end of the cigar continued to gleam from the 
mouth. 

If possible, Doctor Broad was blander than ever, 
more popular with the people, and had greater influ- 
ence in the Bishop’s Cabinet and on the floor of the 
Conference. 

He was received without a question by his different 
flocks as a whole, who were always glad to have him 
returned; but he was also a puzzle and a problem to 
certain individuals, and did not take with the deeply 
spiritual of the membership. 

This last fact never seemed to affect him, however, 
and never caused him to cut them or be unkind in any 
way. Indeed, he was peculiarly courteous and gracious 
to these non-admirers. 


One Sabbath a young preacher filled the pulpit of 


6 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


Doctor Broad at the latter’s urgent entreaty. The 
Doctor’s health had been failing for some months, so 
that the request was not surprising or unprecedented. 
He sat in the pulpit, however, while the young preacher, 
with his heart on fire with the Holy Spirit, preached 
from the text, “It is appointed unto men once to die, 
and after that the Judgment.” It was the Communion 
Sabbath and the table, with its white cloth covering the 
bread and wine, was before him in the altar. Doubt- 
less the subject of “Death and the Judgment” was not 
appropriate, but nevertheless the Holy Ghost came upon 
the Word in a solemn and even awful way. The whole 
audience became as still as death, and conviction as deep 
as it was unusual fell upon the people. The congrega- 
tion, unused to such preaching, looked not only uncom- 
fortable but disturbed and offended, not to say out- 
raged. 

At the conclusion of. the sermon the preacher sat 
down with the conviction that while God was with him, 
other forces which he could not understand were against 
him. Doctor Broad arose and, leaning against the 
Bible stand, proceeded to give a soothing talk of ten or 
fifteen minutes. A sigh of relief seemed to go up from 
the congregation the instant he opened his mouth. He 
said “That it was true, as the preacher had said in his 
sermon, which he had greatly enjoyed, that Death had 


THE STRANGE CASE OF DOCTOR BROAD « 


to come, and after that the Judgment with Christ upon 
the throne; but before those two solemn occasions, the 
blessed opportunity of salvation was granted us; and 
that, while Christ was to be the Judge, yet thus far he 
was the Friend of sinners, the Savior, Advocate, Inter- 
cessor and Comforter of us all.” He then drew a pic- 
ture of Jesus upon the cross, talked of His love to us, 
and our loyalty to Him, and then invited the people to 
the altar to take the Supper of the Lord. 

The transformation of feeling was speedy and com- 
plete in the mental and spiritual realm of the audience, 
and the change was wrought by the speaker not only 
without reflection upon the young preacher, but even 
with complimentary references to him. Still the effect 
of the pulpit message was wiped out, and the messenger 
could not but feel that he had been politely but certainly 
stabbed. The congregation, now restored to ease of 
mind and its usual good-humor and self-complacency, 
did not give him another thought; and he, after the 


‘service, walked away unnoticed by the throng which 


surged about the chancel to shake hands with Doctor 
Broad. 

A few months after this the Doctor was stretched 
upon his dying bed. Always kind and courteous in life, 
he was considerate and thoughtful of others in the sick 
room. He said nothing about his spiritual condition, 


8 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, 


but said ‘““Amen” very heartily to the prayers offered 
at his bedside by different ministers for his recovery, 
and for the blessing of God upon him and his family. 
On the twentieth day of his sickness he died. He 
had full possession of his faculties to the last, and spoke 
quietly and cheerfully to those sitting or standing near 
him up to a few minutes before he passed away, when 
suddenly, a kind of mental shock seemed to take place, 
and his great black eyes became fixed on something be- 
fore and somewhat above him, as though in wonder 
and even horror. Mixed with the astonishment and 
fear was an expression seen upon faces when an unex- 
pected turn of events or an undreamed of catastrophe 
has broken upon them. No one versed in spiritual 
things could look upon the convulsed face and startled, 
dilated eyes of Doctor Broad without seeing that a 
strange new light had broken in upon the man; that 
discoveries were taking place or disclosures being made ; 
that in a word he was going through some tremendous 
and fearful experience, and yet had passed the line 
where the tongue is allowed to declare the mysteries 
of the other world. And so, without another word, but 
with that amazed, shocked look in his eyes, to which 
the dropping chin added in startled appearance, the 
soul of Doctor Broad left his body and went, as shall 


THE STRANGE CASE OF DOCTOR BROAD. 9 


be the case with us all, to the place prepared by the 
life and character. 

The church had very little to do with the funeral of 
the Doctor; for the various fraternities. to which he 
belonged pushed in and took entire charge of the final 
melancholy arrangements. There were two brass bands 
in the long procession, while white aprons, flashing re- - 
galias, beribboned wands, and waving banners abounded. 
Fulsome speeches and addresses were made over the 
flower-covered coffin in the large city hall; the bands 
wailed their dirges along the streets; and after con- 
siderable ceremony at the grave, the earth was thrown 
in, the head-board set up, the floral wreaths and crosses 
laid on the mound, and the great crowd dispersed and 
left Doctor Broad six feet under the sod to await the 
sound of the trumpet ushering in the morning of the 
Resurrection and the Great Day of the Final Judg- 
ment. 

A group of five men lingered a few moments at the 
gate of the cemetery before taking their departure for 
home, store and farm. 

One said, “If they realize in the other world what is 
going on in this, then Doctor Broad is a happy man; 
for if he knows that his funeral procession was a half 


mile long, had two brass bands and four fraternities ~ ; 


in line, then he is glad, I don’t care where he is.” 


we 


10 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


The second man said, “I never heard Doetor Broad 
say an unkind thing about anybody in all the many 
years I have known hin.” 

The third, individual added, “While Doctor Broad 
smoked cigars and drank an occasional glass of wine, 
I would far rather have his kind spirit and risk his 
chance in the other world, than to be like some people 
who criticized and abused him all his life. I think it 
is less harny to smoke a cigar, than to burn up the repu- 
tation and usefulness and happiness of a man or a wo- 
man by a caustic, bitter tongue, which is itself set on 
fire of hell.” 

The fourth person remarked solemnly, “I believe that 
in the moment of death Doctor Broad saw he had made 
a horrible and irreparable mistake; that he had missed 
the real Christ life; in a word, that he had lost his soul.” 

The fifth man said, “If the false prophets and shep- 
herds whom the Bible speaks of are lost, then Doctor 
Broad is lost. If the people who cry for merey at the 
Judgment Day, saying ‘Lord, Lord, did we not preach 
in Thy name in the streets, and in Thy name do many 
wonderful works,’ and yet will hear Christ declaring, 
‘IT know you not,’ and shall straightway fall into an end- 
less Perdition; even so I believe that Doctor Broad on 


that day will stagger backward from the face and words 


THE STRANGE CASE OF DOCTOR BROAD. sal 


of the Son of God and fall headlong into a bottomless 
hell.” 

The men parted; the gate was closed; the sound of 
the last wheel died away in the distance; and the ceme- 
tery with its fragrant breath of Cape Jasmine and Mag- 
nolia blossoms, with its sighing willows, and vacant seats 
and walks, was left silent and solitary once more, with 
the latest addition to its white-faced sleepers in the 
pulseless, rigid form of Doctor Broad. 


Si 
pad 
7 

~ 


i 
A PRINCE IN ISRAEL. 


OULS are said to be equally precious on account of 

being made in the likeness of God, redeemed by the 

same Blood, and with immortal natures susceptible of 
endless development and improvement. 

Yet just as true is it that some souls are worth more 
to humanity and God than others. Two brothers are 
converted and both gain heaven, but one simply saved 
himself and the other brought a great company with 
him. Two members of a church, and in the same social 
plane, receive full salvation, but one exerts only a small 
influence in his community, while the other affects his 
entire neighborhood or town, and hundreds will rise 
up and call him blessed at the last day. Sometimes one 
person’s conversion or sanctification means more to this 
world than a revival which swept a thousand into salva- 
tion. The one accomplished more in after life than 
did the entire ten hundred. 

In addition to immortal and Christ-redeemed na- 
tures, there are such things as boundless energy, a vig- 


orous intellect, a refined nature, good breeding, gentle- 
12 


A PRINCE IN ISRAEL. 13} 


manly instincts, a high sense of honor, character, stu- 
dious habits, and a life of prayer. Such men or women 
move easily and naturally to the front, and they stand 
out from amid their fellows as did the patriarchs in 
their day, the prophets in their time, the disciples in 
the first century, and that devoted band of men who 
gave to the world the Wesleyan Revival. 

The longer we live the more convinced we are as 
we see narrowness contrasted with broadness, laziness 
over against energy, helplessness assisted by helpful- 
ness, that there is a great difference among souls. 

With the profoundest belief in inbred sin and total 
depravity, with all the contradictory and confusing 
facts and figures along the line of the ancestry argu- 
ment, yet it remains that some men are born gentlemen, 
and as far back as we can trace them in childhood pos- 
sess noble, trustful, manly characters. 

Among this latter class was a country boy, in one of 
our Southern States, whose baptismal name was Ed- 
ward. He started life with a sound body, a splendid 
mind, a noble heart, excellent business gifts or qualifi- 
cations, and a spirit full of industry and perseverance. 
Crowning and beautifying all was a blessed Christian 
experience, which he retained through a life of over 
eighty years, and which we have never doubted, in view 


of his deeds, was one of full salvation. 


14 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


The first time his wife ever saw him he was driving 
a team of oxen yoked to a large wagon. She was taking 
a horseback ride with a party of young friends and 
dashed past the loaded vehicle, little dreaming that the 
youth walking by the side of the steers and popping his 
whip as he stood on the big wagon tongue, was her 
future husband. - She galloped on out of sight with her 
merry companions, but Edward,even then with his mind 
full of noble, grand thoughts, came quietly and steadily 
after, driving up the road in a deeper sense than the 
literal one, and not only approaching the mission of his 
life, but entering upon its blessed accomplishment so 
as to win the favor of men and the blessings of heaven. 

It is wonderful what he overtook on that road. He 
soon passed in trueness of living the young men, who 
loped by him that morning. He left many others beside 
them behind. He overtook the girl who became his 
wife. He overtook fortune. He caught up with public 
honor and general respect. He swept on to still greater 
wealth, and possessed broad plantations and a beautiful 
mansion home. At the same time he walked unbrokenly 
with God. His earthly abundance failed to come in 
between him and his Savior. The remarkable thing 
soon noticed by everybody was that the more he pros- 
pered financially the more he gave to God. 

He did not do like a man we know who, as he made 


A PRINCE IN ISRAEL. 15 


money, would invest it in partial purchases, so as to 
say to seekers after his bounty that he was in debt. He 
_ did not let the money which flowed in metallize his 
soul, as it has done to many; but as God prospered 
him he gave. The more his business increased, the 
greater swelled his streams of gold and silver in gifts 
to God, and benevolence to men. 

It looked like God had found a man he could trust 
with riches, and so he smiled upon and blessed every 
enterprise of His faithful servant. The Almighty 
fairly rained wealth on him, and he showered it back. 
It looked to heaven and to spiritual observers that a 
kind of love and trust struggle was going on between 
the two. God would seem to be saying: 

“Here, my son, is more money for you. I know you 
will not worship it; nor let it make you cold and 
haughty to your fellow-beings; nor cause you to cease 
leaning on Me. Here is a large amount for you.” And 
the true follower of Christ, who had not lost his head 
with his great successes, nor surrendered his love for 
the Savior or his fellow-creatures, would let the dollars 
fly in thousands to help the bodies of men on earth, and 
their souls on the way to heaven. 

He put sixty thousand dollars’ in one church. He 
gave one hundred thousand to a college. There was 


scarcely a house of worship within a hundred miles 


16 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


of his home but had his means in it from fifty to one 
thousand dollars. The preachers knew where to come 
when financial help was needed for the sick and the 
poor. His purse was ever open to the ery of want. 

Not a minister of the Gospel in that Southern State, 
or from any other State, but was assured of and always 
received a cordial welcome in the elegant, hospitable 
home of the subject of this sketch. Sometimes these 
clerical and lay guests were poorly clad, and unpolished 
and awkward in manner, but their noble-hearted enter- 
tainer never seemed to notice it, and treated the poorest 
man who accepted his hospitality with the same cour- 
tesy and cordiality that he did one of the neighboring 
wealthy cotton planters. 

On one occasion an humble guest, in tilting back his 
chair on the waxed floor of the parlor, came near losing 
his balance and falling on the floor. Two of the daugh- 
ters of the household gave a little snicker peculiar to 
the senselessness of youth, but the grave, rebuking look 
_ of their father settled them instantly then and there. 
Then, as if nothing had happened, the courtly, noble 
man, who had been a poor boy in the beginning of his 
life, said to his confused guest : 

“These waxed floors are a pet idea of my wife and 
daughters. I have pleaded in vain for carpets all the 


year round for safety’s sake; for even now, after the 


A PRINCE IN ISRAEL. ee 


practice of years, I walk over these slippery floors al- 
most in terror of my life. But they are the queens of 
the home, and I submit to their superior taste at the risk 
of a fractured limb or a broken head.” 

The relief of the guest was immediate, while the 
speech was so kind and pleasant as to inflict no wound 
on the family, in coming to the deliverance of the friend 
or acquaintance. 

A number of preachers who at different times spent 
the night at this home famous for its hospitality, would 
leave next day with an experience which was made up 
of equal parts of surprise and pleasure, and caused a 
general laugh over the neighborhood when it was found 
out. If any of them came on a poor, broken-down horse 
and left him tied at the rack, this was the last he 
ever saw of the animal, for next morning, in taking 
his departure, there, at the hitching place where he had 
left a bundle of skin and bones with an old saddle upon 
it, was a handsome, well-kept steed, and freshly capar- 
isoned. 

“Why, where is my horse?” he would say in aston- 
ishment. “Some mistake has been made.” But the 
servant told him that there had been no mistake; that 
“Ole Marster” had made him this present. 

Then the next words would be, “I want to see your 


‘marster’,”’—“this is too kind”—or, “I want to thank 


18 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


him,” ete., ete. But by this time Judge M., for this was 
the title given him after middle life, was not to be 
seen ; he had vanished. As for the old animal which 
had disappeared, the Judge superannuated him, and set 
him free, letting him eat, graze and roll out the balance 
of his days without work, in view of what he had done. 

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Judge M. 
greatly helped the Confederate cause. His factory sup- 
plied blankets, and his broad acres yielded food for the 
soldiers. It was said by one who knew him well that he 
took care of the family of every poor Southern soldier 
in a radius of twelve miles of his home. 

“Sich was his powerful help in various ways to the 
cause of the South that, when a Federal raid swept 
through that part of the State where he lived in the 
latter part of the war, he was arrested and taken out in 
front of his house to be shot. 

A file of soldiers was selected to do the shooting, and 
Judge M., now silver-haired and eighty, was placed 
before them, sitting in a chair because of his feebleness, 
to receive their bullets. 

The gzand old man, with his gray hair falling upon 
his shoulders, looked like a patriarch, as he sat quietly 
facing the Union soldiers. He was as calm as when 
he had entertained his guests upon the gallery or in 


A PRINCE IN ISRAEL. 19 


the parlor, and dispensed the hospitality for which he 

was famous. Even now he looked more like a prince 
receiving visitors than a condemned man facing a death- 
guard and executioners. 


Three times the eight men raised their guns at the 


99 66 b) 


command of their officer to ‘Make ready,” “Aim,” and 
“Fire!” And three times their Enfield rifles dropped! 
They could not pull the trigger; they could not fire! 

Would the reader like to know why ? 

It was not only because of the kind and noble face 
shining upon them; but there was something between 
them and the victim. Something that they could not 
move away, nor shoot through. This something was the 
Word of God! 

The special passage was Psalm 41, verses 1 and 2, 

“Blessed is the man that considereth the poor; the Lord 
will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will pre- 
serve him and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed 
upon the earth; and thou wilt not deliver him unto the 
will of his enemies.” 
_ The man before them had cared for the poor all his 
life; he had won God’s promise of protection and deliv- 
erance; and now, according to God’s own Word, they 
could not do him any harm. He was as safe from their 
bullets as though he was in heaven. 


sf ea REMARKABLE OCC 

Judge M. lived a few years aft 
away into the skies in great peace and t 
Jacob he was old and full of days; like En 


with God and was not, for God took h 
he being dead yet speaketh. 


TL 
THE WARMED SERPENT. 


N one of our Southern States there lived a prosperous 
| farmer. He had a pleasant cottage home, with or- 
chard, garden, yards, and barns, while stretching be- 
yond these possessions were twenty-five acres of cotton 
and corn. 

He was a married man with one little girl. He had 
protessed religion at some protracted or camp meeting, 
and joined the Methodist Church. The life he lived 
was a quiet and simple one, but he had the necessaries 
of life, with comforts besides, had his church associa- 
tions and privileges, with pleasant neighbors, was fairly 
prosperous and a contented man. 

One night he heard a knock at his front door. On 
going to the steps he found a tramp standing in the 
dark, who asked for his supper and a night’s lodging. 
Mr. K. told him to come in.. The man did so, and 
instead of spending one night, he stayed thirty-three 
years. He passed the rest of his life in that home, and 
only left it as a corpse a generation of years later. He 
not only did this, but, fearful to relate, stole away the 


Christian faith of his entertainer; morally and spirit- 
2 


22 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, 


ually ruined him, and landed his soul in perdition. 

The man was a tramp, but no ordinary one. He was 
bright, brainy and well-read, but without the inclination 
to make his own living; a character that is not infre- 
quently met with in society, where the shiftless indi- 
vidual is smart and entertaining, but reluctant to work 
with hartds or brain for daily bread. Such men be- 
come hangers on of families, spongers upon friends, 
making themselves agreeable and even desirable by their 
quick wits, and only requiring in pay that they get their 
ted and board. Many of these persons are not harmful, 
but are simply barnacles clinging to those who will 
allow them to be such social attachments. 

In the case mentioned in this sketch, the man who 
knocked at the door and stayed thirty-three years was 
abad man. He was a skeptic dyed in the wool, and had 
the writings of Paine and Voltaire at his fingers’ ends. 

It took some time, but he accomplished his infernal 
work at last, and utterly destroyed the Christian faith 
and experience of the man who bade him come in out 
of the night. He was the serpent warmed at the hearth 
that returned the kindness of his benefactor by stinging 
him to spiritual death. He made a horrible return for 
the kindness shown him in his need. 

Mr. K. gave up the church, worked about his farm 
on the Sabbath, became a tobacco worm, and developed 


THE WARMED SERPENT. ey 


into a gloomy-faced, sour-spirited, bitter-tongued man. 
Many of his acquaintances and friends fell away from 
him, and he was thrown mainly, and finally almost en- 
tirely, upon the infidel for company. 

At last the skeptic died, and the gray-haired man in 
the coffin in the wagon was followed by a gray-haired 
man on horseback as the solitary mourner. 

After this Mr. K. became still more morose and bit- 
ter, hardly ever leaving his farm and so almost literally 
dropped out of public sight and notice. 

Four years after the death of the tramp who had 
ruined him, he himself was taken down with a desper- 
ate sickness. He lingered in great suffering for several 
weeks. The writer arriving at that time as the pastor 
of a church in a neighboring town, was sent for to visit 
him. The summons came on the day of the old man’s 
death. Not having a horse, and unable to borrow one, 
and realizing the urgency of the case, we trudged on 
foot four miles along a muddy road to the house of 
death. 

The sick, or, rather, dying man, was conscious, but 
refused to talk. We knelt and prayed for him, and the 
prayer seemed driven back in our face. Arising from 
our knees, we begged him to accept Christ, and he with 
a black and horrible look rejected Him. In a few min- 
utes more he was a corpse. Two days later he was 


24 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


buried in a country graveyard, and near the church 
which he had attended in his happier days. 

It was the custom of the neighborhood to remove 
the coffin lid at the graveyard and let the people pass 
in akind of procession by the casket and take a farewell 
look at the deceased. On that day there happened to be 
two burials, and both occurring at the same hour. One 
was that of Mr. K., and the other the funeral of a 
saintly lady aged about eighty. 

Separated by about twenty yards, the two coffins were 
placed on the ground and the lids removed. Several 
hundred people looked at the two silent forms and will 
never forget as long as eternity rolls the striking and 
even fearful difference between the two death-touched 
countenances. The glory actually lingered on the face 
of that Mother in Israel who had walked with God 
without a break for over sixty years. 

Scarcely a soul that day looked upon the calm, sweet 
and all but smiling face without tears springing to the 
eyes. God’s seal was on His own, even in death. 

The crowd, after the burial of this Daughter of the 
King, went over to Mr. K.’s grave lot, where the casket 
lay upon the grass with its silent tenant inside. The 
cover was removed, and the people marched by its side 
and, glancing in, instantly averted their eyes with looks 
of pain and distress, and some even with low exclama- 


THE WARMED SERPENT. I 


tions of horror. The face had on it the very same black 
scowl that we saw a few minutes before death. It 
Was an expression so dark and hopeless and hard that 
we do not believe a single one doubted that the man was 
lost. The soul in quitting the body seemed to have left 
its own terror and despair upon the face as it fled away 
into eternal night. 

The question asked by some would be, why did God 
allow such a being to come to that house and forever ruin 
the man who was kind to him ? 

The Bible plainly answers all such questions, while 
life is full of similar instances, and the word Probation 
contains in itself a perfect explanation to any thought- 
ful and sensible man. 

Judge Longstreet, a prominent educator in the South, 
tells of a gifted young man who married a fashionable 
girl at a time when his prospects were brilliant and ste- 
cess assured. The woman was a mere butterfly of 
fashion, had no idea how to keep a house, preside at the 
table, or save money. The husband brought his friends 
home to dine with him, as he was a public character, 
and his mortifications were so deep and frequent on 
these occasions, and his bills became so great, run up 
by the thoughtless, giddy, foolish woman he had 
married, that he finally took to drink, and in a few 


26 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


years, after having lost all his practice and property, 
landed in a drunkard’s grave. 

Again the question comes up, why did not God pre- 
vent all this by removing the weak, vain, useless girl be- 
fore she met the young and gifted lawyer? And again 
we are answered by the word, Probation. 

We look at the silly marriages of godly women to 
worldly, sinful men, and the senseless matches made by 
preachers with women who are neither companions nor 
helpmeets to their husbands, and we wonder what they 
were thinking of at the time. Such ill-assorted rela- 
tions mean not only unhappiness to both, but often- 
times backsliding and moral shipwreck. We have 
known good men to go to ruin through an unhappy mar- 
riage. An unspiritual woman stood on the doorstep, 
knocked, was admitted, took possession, and drove a 
man of God to desperation, sin and the grave of a back- 
slider. She herself followed the body of the man she 
had ruined to the tomb. Maybe she sat in the carriage 
behind a black crepe veil and wiped her eyes with a 
black-bordered handkerchief. But she was the murder- 
ess of the man in the coffin, just the same. 

And God allows all this, because it is a part of our 
probation. We are on trial. We are being tested in 
many ways. If we cannot stand temptation, we ought 


to know it. If we cannot rise superior to wrong influ- 


THE WARMED SERPENT. Di 


ences, how can we be rewarded, much less saved? If 
people have to be killed, or we must be caught up into 
the skies, from the presence of every man or woman who 
comes along, how can we be tried and tested, how find 
out what is in us, and how develop the spiritual powers 
that lie all dormant and unknown within us. 

So the mistakes in marriage, business, and other mo- 
mentous matters are permitted. The man or woman 
who is to injure or ruin us is allowed to knock at the 
door of the life. And this is partly to test us, but also 
because there is no need for us to stagger and fall. He 
that is for us is greater than the person who knocks at 
the door and comes into the life. If we look to Christ, 
no one can pluck us from His hand. 


IV. 
THE TWO LETTERS. 


N our early ministerial life we had a member of our 
| church who was a steward and trustee, the friend of 
the preacher, prayed well, paid well, was a good leader 
of a prayer meeting, and stood high as a citizen and 
Christian in the small town where he lived. 

He had a very wild, wicked son, and two superior and 
attractive daughters. These two last undoubtedly made 
a bright home for the father. Both were handsome, 
intelligent girls, but he seemed to be especially fond of 
the elder of the two. This preference was evident to 
everybody, and the daughter herself felt that she was 
the favorite. 

Meantime the son gave nothing but trouble in his 
short visits home, or in his long absences, no one knew 
where. One thing was clearly demonstrated in his ease, 
and that was that locality and surroundings failed to 
affect him for good; he was a transgressor of human 
and divine law wherever he went. 

The daughters seemed in a measure to take the son’s 
place and greatly brightened the home, so that it was a 


pleasure to visit the house and listen to the cheerful 
28 


THE TWO LETTERS. 29 


conversation of the father, who was quite a reader and 
thinker, and unquestionably a superior man. It was 
touching to see his love and fondness for his daughters, 
_and especially noticeable how his eyes shone in approval 
and admiration of the elder girl. He had gotten in 
some way to lean upon her, and she had willingly be- 
come a stay to this man of sixty. 

One morning the village was shocked at the tidings 
that his favorite daughter had eloped with a young man 
of most trifling character, and utterly unworthy of her. 
Tt was also known that the father, through the knowl- 
edge of the youth’s worthlessness, had forbidden him 
from visiting the house, and had first requested and 
then commanded his daughter never to see him again. 
And yet here she had run away with him. 

One will ask, was she and the young man of age? 
We believe they were, and this gave them a legal right; 
but what of the Fifth Commandment, which says, 
“Honor thy father and thy mother.” Then there is a 
wrong way of doing even a right thing; and further 
still, there is a right way of doing everything. They 
did not pursue the correct way. The father had done 
everything for her, and even now was endeavoring to 
protect her from future misery; but in her infatuation, 
the devotion and kindness of a lifetime was forgotten 


and she fled from her girlhood’s home in the night. 


30 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


One of the most painful experiences of the writer’s 
life was undergone in visiting this parent on the recep- 
tion of the distressing news. As we approached the 
home, it looked like a house of death. The mother was 
prostrated, the younger daughter, with red, swollen 
eyelids, appeared only a moment and vanished, while 
a servant silently opened the door and led us without a 
word into the sitting-room, where the father sat in a 
large rocking-chair, looking twenty years older than 
when we had last seen him a few short days before. 

He was the soul of courtesy, and arose at once to re- 
ceive us, and tried to assume his old, pleasant manner, 
but it was a complete failure and sinking back in his 
chair with his face buried in his hands he groaned out, 
“Oh, Brother C., my heart is broken.” 

In another moment almost, and before we could fin- 
ish speaking some words of tender sympathy, he recoy- 
ered his composure, and his face assumed the same stony 
look which had struck us on entering. 

After this the hard, set expression never left him. 
No matter what was said to him in any way about his 
great sorrow, the look we have mentioned remained 
unaltered. 

A letter came a few days after the elopement from the 
daughter begging for forgiveness. He sent it back to her 
with the words, “As she had made her bed, she must lie 


THE TWO LETTERS. 31 


upon it.” She wrote another, but he returned it un- 
opened. She became sick, and we doubt not mainly from 
remorse at her own conduct, but he refused to go to her, 
or allow anyone of the family to visit her. The wife 
and second daughter begged with tears that she might 
be forgiven and brought back, but he was inflexible. 

Just as he had known and said, the man who mar- 
ried his daughter was trifling and unable to support his 
wife; and again the family besought that she might be 
brought home and properly cared for. His reply was 
that ‘“‘she had chosen her way, let her walk in it. She 
had laid down with dogs, and must expect to be afflicted 
with fleas.” 

A more miserable man than he was at this time we 
never knew; for while he would not forgive his daugh- 
ter he still passionately loved her and was endeavoring 
to throttle and destroy the affection. 

After six or eight months the sad-hearted young wife 
got better in health for the time being, and moved with 
her husband to.a distant State, where he obtained some 
kind of humble occupation. The contrast between her 
eramped comfortless quarters, and poor unnourishing 
food, with the sweet, glad, well-protected and bounti- 
fully provided life of her girlhood made a most heart- 
breaking contrast. 

Still other months rolled by, but the father allowed no 


ya 


32 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


letter to be written to her by the family, or received 
from her. News, however, struggled through in some 
way that she was in great poverty, and in wretched 
health. 

If pity for her touched his heart, he never expressed 
it. His own face seemed as if carved out of marble, 


and his eyes had a burning look of misery in them, as 


if a hidden flame was consuming his soul, or the undy- 


ing worm had already commenced its everlasting work 
of spirit torment. 

By and by they heard that the wild, wayward son 
had drifted. into the very neighborhood of his sister. 
In one of his rare letters he said that “she looked like 
the wreck of herself.” 

Still the father gave no sign of yielding. 

One day he went down to the village postoffice. Two 
letters were handed him. One was in the handwriting 
of his prodigal son. He opened the envelope in front of 
the office and read the crushing tidings that his daugh- 
ter, the wife of scarcely twenty months, had just died. 

With a face as white as a corpse, and hands shaking 
as if with an ague, he took up the second letter, which 
was dated a day later than the other, was addressed in 
a strange hand, and had the words “In haste” written 
in one corner. Literally wrenching it open the 
wretched man read the astounding information, from 


THE TWO LETTERS. 33 


an utter stranger, that his son, the very one whose letter 
he had just read, had been instantly killed that same 
day by the explosion of a steam gin boiler, before 
which he happened to be standing. 

Some in the postoffice heard a loud groan, and then 
a heavy fall on the pavement outside. Running to the 
place they found the doubly-bereaved man stretched 
full length and unconscious on the brick walk, with 
the two letters grasped in his hand; one announcing 
the death of the daughter written by the son, and the 
other telling of the shocking end of the son himself, the 
very day after he had written the sorrowful news about 
his sister. 

The above sketch is not fiction, but an actual occur- 
rence. Truly we do not need to go to books, or to 
the drama, to see and hear remarkable and sorrowful 
things. The darkest tragedies are taking place around 
us in life all the time. Men and women are continu- 
ally meeting us on the street, sitting by us in the car 
and in the church, who are actually staggering, faint- 
ing, falling and dying under burdens and sorrows that 
are too great for human strength to bear. The most 
heartbreaking things do not always appear in the 
papers; and greatest griefs remain forever unknown. 

How pitiful we ought to be to that procession of life 
constantly filing past us, with loads heavy enough al- 


34 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


ready; and yet to them far sadder things are coming. 
A yellow envelope marked “Telegram” is delivered, 
but it proves a lurid lightning bolt to the heart! A 
letter is received at the postoffice; and it means when 


opened that the sun of earthly happiness has set 
forever ! 


ie 
THE RESTORATION OF A PREACHER. 


E was a Methodist preacher and had been for years 
H a very useful one. He obtained the Baptism of 
the Spirit and became much more useful, getting not 
only his own church blessed, but holding meetings for 
his ministerial brethren and having gracious revivals 
on their works wherein many souls received free and 
full salvation. 

The subject of this sketch, whose name was D., had 
the double gift of writing religious verses or hymns, 
and composing melodies to wing them on their flight. 
He collected a number of his own composition and had 
them published in book form. God honored this little 
volume of Gospel song, as He had already blessed the 
ministry of His servant. Among these hymns was one 
he called “The Prodigal Boy.” The chorus ran, 


“ But for one far away there remains a place, 
For his father doth love him still; 

And he ean come back to his loving embrace, 
Yes, he can come back if he will.” 


This hymn seemed to be peculiarly honored of heaven. 


The author scarcely ever sung it without seeing some- 
35 


36 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, 


one leave his sins and backslidings, and come home to 
God. 

By and by something got in between the disciple and 
his Lord. Then followed a gradual loss of joy and 
power, later a greater drifting, and at last a heart- 
sickening distance from the Saviour, which the man 
perfectly realized in himself and which was equally 
manifest to others. 

What bent led to the commencement of the back- 
sliding is not known. The man may have been be- 
trayed into the habit of scolding, fault-finding, unkind 
suspicion, and harsh judgment. Many go this way. 

He may have unconsciously presumed on the pre- 
rogative of the Pope and became infallible. He may 
have spoken where God has been silent, set up a stand- 
ard of Christian living according to his own ideas and 
notions, and insisted that his brethren adopt it or be 
excommunicated if not actually run out of the ministry 
and country for nonconformity to his opinions. 

It may have been a grosser though not a more hard- 
ening sin that led him astray. Anyhow, his face 
clouded, his voice got rasping, his shouts ended, his 
songs ceased, his testimony was no more, and soon he 
was out of the ministry. 


News came that he had taken up some kind of secular 


THE RESTORATION OF A PREACHER. aif 


work, and then had moved to a large city. After that 
he was lost sight of for several years. 

At this time the writer was sent to the same city as 
the preacher in charge of one of the churches. He 
was conducting a meeting in his own charge, and had a 
singer employed to assist him in that part of the work. 

One night after the sermon had been preached, the 
altar call made, and many were coming forward, the 
leader of song, who was at the organ rendering hymn 
after hymn of invitation, suddenly saw Brother D., the 
subject of this sketch, sitting in the back seat of the 
crowded auditorium. The singer, whose name was R., 
knew D. and his history well, and seeing him thus 
suddenly after the lapse of years, felt like one behold- 
ing the face of a man looking at him from the crest 
of a sea wave, who was supposed to be at the bottom of 
the ocean. 

Calling the writer quickly to his side R. told him 
that D. was present, and where he could be found. 
After a few moments we turned our eyes in the direc- 
tion which had been whispered, and saw one of the 
most melancholy faces we ever beheld. The man had 
black hair and eyes, and possessed a striking face 
naturally, but the deep-settled sadness on his counte- 
nance would alone have attracted attention in any 


assembly. It was not simply grief that had left its 


38 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


stamp, but the dull, dead look of a hopeless sorrow. 

The initials of the man’s name were S. A. D., and 
if ever we saw a face that measured up perfectly to 
these initials, it was the countenance of D., the man 
pointed out to us. 

As we were looking at the wanderer, who had been 
washed up by a billow of God’s providence from the 
great Deep of the world outside and thrown on the 
strand of our meeting, we noticed that R. was playing 
the organ with one hand and busily turning over and 
looking at a number of different song books that were 
piled up on a shelf in the instrument. At last he 
seemed to get the one he wanted. Glancing at the title 
on the back we saw it was a copy of D.’s own song book. 

Opening quickly at a certain page, R. deftly placed 
the book before him and began playing and singing 
“The Prodigal Boy.” We never heard him sing better, 
and when he came to the chorus he fixed his eyes on D. 
and fairly poured forth the words: 


“But for one far away there remains a place, 
For his Father doth love him still; 
And he can come back to His loving embrace, 
Yes, he can come back if he will.” 


The instant R. began singing the hymn D. gave a 
sudden start, and cast a look at the singer that was 
indescribable in its mingled surprise, pain and despair. 


THE RESTORATION OF A PREACHER. 39 


But R. sang on through each stanza, and reaching the 
chorus he would repeat it again and again, throwing 
his very soul into the words, until we saw D.’s head 
going down, his face buried in his hands and his form 
shaking violently; when he suddenly arose and, al- 
most staggering up the aisle, fell down at the altar with 
groans that went to every heart. The song which he 
had composed and had often sung with the result of 
bringing sinners and backsliders to salvation, had been 
used by the Holy Spirit to draw the author himself 
back to God. 

R., with his face shining with joy, left the organ, 
ran to D., and, throwing his arms around him, wept 
and prayed aloud a marvelous prayer in his behalf. 

D. was reclaimed that night, and before the week 
ended swept back into the blessing of full salvation. 
He then joined our church. 

In the course of a year the writer gave up the pastor- 
ate and became an evangelist. He left a strong Holi- 
ness church behind him; but the Great Adversary laid 
his plans and secured his human abettors to discourage, 
silence, divide and scatter this wonderful band of 
sanctified people. 

In a return trip to the city, after an absence of a 
few months, a great change was plainly observable in 
the church. There was little or no response under 


- ye 

ra Le kaa 

AM) oy aaa: 
we 


40 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


preaching. The altar was empty. The prayer meeting 
preceding the main service at night was thinned out, 
and had but little glow and vigor. In the testimony 
service there seemed to be a studied avoidance of the 
word sanctification. 

We were told in explanation that the pastor had re- 
quested there should be less noise in the prayer meet- 
ing, and that the obnoxious word should not be used, 
as it was offensive to some church members, and was 
not understood by still others. 

With a closer attention after this side light, we 
observed that a number of faces we had last seen all 
ashine with holiness, were now in shadow. With a 
thrill of pleasure we- noticed at the same time that 
D.’s countenance was far brighter than we had ever 
seen it. 

A later visit showed a greater thinning out in the 
Holiness ranks. A number had lost the experience 
and were repossessed of dumb spirits, others had gone 
elsewhere for spiritual food, and a few had undertaken 
various kinds of mission work in the city, in a spirit of 
self-preservation and to feed and rescue souls they saw 
starving and dying around them. 

In the little band left in the church who were still 
true to Full Salvation we saw the bright, joyous face 
of D. He seemed to have passed out of the rank of the 


THE RESTORATION OF A PREACHER. 41 


“thirty” and entered the still higher grade of the 
“three.” 

A still later visit to the city and church brought a 
crowning wonder. The very individuals whom we 
expected to keep the Holiness Band together and be 
leaders and protectors in the time of adversity, had 
failed to do so. But, lo! at this trying moment D. had 
come forward and quietly taken the front rank, and was 
the comforter, counselor, helper and leader of the mis- 
understood, despised and opposed little company of the 
sanctified. 

This was the last time we saw him. He possessed the 
respect and confidence of his pastor, enjoyed the love 
and trust of the Holiness people, and was flourishing 
under the smile, favor and constant blessings of God. 

The curtain, so to speak, drops on him here, for we 
have not seen him for many months. But he is still 
true to God, uses his song book, and, above all, possesses 
the Spirit which makes his talks, prayers and hymns 
effective. 

Among the large number of religious songs he has 
written, he has not given to the world a sweeter and 
truer one than “The Prodigal Boy.” The chorus alone 
has in it the sweetness and fullness of the Gospel. Not 


only many wanderers brought back to God can testify 


42 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


to this, but the author himself of the hymn and chorus 
can say, I know it is true. 
How his heart must swell with love and gratitude 


as he stands before an audience to-day and sings: 


“ But for one far away there remains a place, 
For his Father doth love him still; 

And he can come back to His loving embrace, 
Yes, he can come back if he will.” 


VI. 
A DEVOTED WIFE. 


E have known parents who were tender, sacrific- 
ing and devoted to their children, to be re- 
warded by ingratitude, disobedience, neglect and gross 
insult. On the other hand, we have seen fathers and 
mothers who were cold, exacting, selfish and at times 
eruel to their offspring, who had in return for such 
unnaturalness as faithful, loving and self-denying chil- 
dren as ever blessed a family circle. Reason, analogy 
and everything else would have prophesied and expected 
different results in each case, and yet here were the 
granite facts before one as described. 

Again, we have seen a man who provided well for his 
household, denied his wife nothing, had not a single 
offensive habit like tobacco or whisky to make his pres- 
ence in the house disagreeable, and yet in face of all 
that, was treated to the day of his death as a mere 
cipher, or figure-head, in the family. He never knew 
a whole day of pleasure and happiness in his entire 
married life. 

Remarkable to say, we have beheld the opposite pic- 


ture, where the man reeked with tobacco, was scarcely 
43 


by 


oe i Si aes ; 
wa 


44 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


ever from under the influence of liquor, was blustering 
and profane, was insulting and cruel, never made a 
plan for the pleasure of his household, and fairly ig- 
nored the presence of his wife and children; and yet 
she and they clung to him with an undying affection 
through everything, and when the poor moral wreck 
and life failure was in his coffin, the woman flung her- 
self upon the pulseless clay with a heartbroken wail, 
and was carried to her room unconscious. 

Men may try to account for these cases, and give 
sapient reasons for the remarkable unnatural results, 
but the facts remain the same after all the learned 
explanations. 

When a lad of twelve we first saw Colonel and Mrs. 
J., as they were paying a brief visit at the residence 
of a married sister of the writer. They owned a large 
and beautiful cotton plantation and were wealthy. 
They were both brunettes, he about thirty-five years 
of age and she twenty-eight, and a finer-looking couple 
it would have been hard to find. 

Two things impressed even the careless at once about 
them; one was that Colonel J. was a dissipated man, 
while Mrs. J. was perfectly wrapped up in her hus- 
band. When he spoke, her ears never lost a word, and 
when he was not speaking her eyes would dwell upon 


his face with such an expression of tenderness and 


A DEVOTED WIFE. 45 


fondness that print could not have been plainer. It 
mattered not what he said or did, whether he noticed 
her or not, whether he was polite or rude, the beautiful 
brown eyes of the woman fairly baptized the man with 
her rich, overflowing affection. 

No sun plant ever followed the great orb of day 
with a more devoted gaze than this woman attended 
with unchanging and glorifying love the man of her 
choice. As some flowers can only live in the sunshine, 
she seemed only to exist for, and in the presence of her 
husband. She seemed to be filled with a great inward 
joy when he was around, and drooped or grew restless 
when he was absent. 

Colonel J. was a fine-looking, dashing Southern gen- 
tleman, but was absorbed in himself, and being nearly 
always under the influence of liquor, had no eyes to 
observe the devotion of his wife, and if he did, took it 
as a matter of course. 

The steady drinker is compelled at last, through the 
abuse of brain, nerve, and every other power, to become 
moody, irritable, and fault-finding. All this naturally 
came first on the wife; but she bore it without a mur- 
mur. Later there were dreadful outbursts of wrath; 
and some said, who were best acquainted with the 
family, that there were acts of physical violence, and 


that they came upon the body of this faithful woman. 


46 REMARKABLE QCCURRENCES. 


If it was so, such a statement never fell from her lips: 
indeed, at this time she became, if possible, more de- 
voted to her husband. 

One day a physician was suddenly summoned to the 
residence, with the information that Mrs. J. had 
swooned. The doctor, who was a very observant man, 
bent over the unconscious woman and saw at once that 
it was no ordinary fainting spell. His hand was busy 
searching for contusions and fractures, while Colonel J. 
paced restlessly up and down the front gallery. 

When consciousness was restored the physician asked 
the sufferer how a certain large bruise came upon her 
face. She replied without a moment’s hesitation that 
“Tt was likely she had fallen and inflicted it on herself.” 

_ The doctor fixed his gaze steadily upon her and said: 

“Mrs. J., has it occurred to you that the boot-heel of 
Colonel J. made that mark ?” 

And the woman, with the great, pathetic brown eyes 
fixed unwaveringly on the doctor, and protecting her 
idol to the last, said quietly: 

“No, sir; it has never so occurred to me.” 

The physician gave a heavy sigh, left her side, and, 
walking past Colonel J., on the gallery, refused to 
speak to him and, mounting his horse, rode away. 

A few months after that Colonel J. got into an alter- 
cation with the overseer on his plantation, and shot the 


A DEVOTED WIFE. 47 


man down in cold blood. The murderer was at once 
arrested, brought to the town where the writer lived, 
and lodged in jail. 

Mrs. J. immediately came to the same community, 
took board at one of the hotels, but spent most of the 
time with her husband in his dark and unattractive 
little cell. As the murder was so foul and pitiless, the 
court refused the prisoner bail. 

The trial came on after several months, and dragged 
its way along for days and weeks. The Colonel had 
money and made a hard fight for his life. But elo- 
quent and skillful manipulation of the case by able 
men could not alter the ghastly facts, that a cruel 
murder had been committed. And so the verdict was 
brought in one day by. the foreman that the prisoner 
was guilty in the first degree. The Judge put on his 
black cap, and, looking at the pale man before him, 
pronounced that on a certain day he should be hung 
by the neck until he was dead, closing with the usual 
words, “and may God have mercy on your soul.” 

At this moment there was the crash of a falling 
body, and Mrs. J. was carried almost lifeless from the 
room. All the summer she had stayed by her husband’s 
side in the poorly-lighted and worse ventilated jail; 
nor had she left him through all the painful scenes 


and experiences of the court-room ; but now, on hearing 


48 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


the words of doom, she seemed unable to bear up an- 
other moment, and fell with a breaking heart to the 
floor. 

On being borne to the outer air, she recovered im- 
mediately and begged to be led to her husband. With 
a calmness that impressed all with wonder she went 
by the doomed man’s side to the jail. A number who 
observed her face that day were struck with a strange 
resolute look, which gleamed in the eye and declared 
itself in lines of the countenance, and which they trans- 
lated into a determination never to leave him again, 
until he walked upon the scaffold six weeks from that 
day. How completely they misread that look on her 
face! And how little they dreamed of the depths of 
devotion in a woman’s heart when she really loves! 

At this period the writer saw Mrs. J. a number of 
times at his sister’s house. She still remained a very 
beautiful woman, but her face was deadly pale, and she 
had an abstracted expression in her eyes that was alto- 
gether unusual. She would have to be spoken to sey- 
eral times on some occasions before she seemed to hear; 
then would say, “Oh, I didn’t hear you. I was think- 
ing of something.” 

Of course all hearts ached to see her look so, and 
answer as she did, for we imagined that her thoughts 


A DEVOTED WIFE. 49 


were with her husband in the cell, and anticipating the 
last dreadful scene on the scaffold. _ 

She visited no one else save our sister, whom she 
loved very much, and explained even these brief calls 
by saying that she took this little time from her hus- 
band in the way of exercise and recreation, simply to 
keep up health and strength for his sake. Three or 
four times she paid hurried visits to her plantation, 
but would return the same day. As she had left her 
two little daughters, aged eight and nine years, at the 
country home, and as her temporal interests naturally 
demanded her presence on her place once in a while, 
nothing was thought of these occasional trips. 

One afternoon, in saying adieu to the writer’s sister, 
Mrs. J. said, “Good-by, dear; I may not see you again.” 

“Why, where are you going?” cried our sister. 

Mrs. J. became crimson and seemed confused; but 
only for a moment. She replied quietly: 

“Oh, nowhere; but in these times when war has com- 
menced, we don’t know what will take place.” 

The very next morning the town was electrified with 
the news that Colonel J. had escaped from the jail! 
The sheriff, deputy and possés sworn in as assistants, 
searched the swamps in every direction, but the rescue 
and flight had been too well planned and carried out 


50 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


by the devoted wife, and so Colonel J. disappeared 
forever from his native country and State. 

That resolute look on her face that day at Court 
meant that she was determined that her husband should 
not hang, but be rescued. So while she visited him, 
going in and out of the jail, she took the impression 
of keys and locks upon wax. Her trips to her plantation 
were to have her own blacksmith make the iron skele- 
tons which were to free her husband. It took several 
journeys to get them fashioned exactly right. Then 
she had a faithful servant to station himself with a 
fleet horse in the edge of the swamp near the town on 
a certain night. It lacked then only a week to the day 
of the execution. And it was that afternoon when, in 
her restlessness, Mrs. J. paid her last visit to the home 
of our sister as described, and came doubtless to be 
reassured that there was no suspicion existing as to 
the proposed break and dash for liberty. From that 
last visit she went to the jail, sat with her husband 
until nightfall as usual, gave him the keys, a pistol, 
and money, and then returned to her room at the hotel. 

At midnight, when all was still, Colonel J. quietly 
unlocked the door of his cell, and then the outer gates 
with the manufactured keys, went to the edge of the 
swamp where the faithful negro was awaiting him with 


a horse, and was forty miles on his way to the Missis- 


A DEVOTED WIFE. 51 


sippi River before he was missed. He reached the 
shore, took a steamboat going northward, crossed the 
lines, and was lost to view of friends and enemies in 
the South forever. 

Mrs. J. retired to her plantation, and became a 
recluse for months. She may have been waiting for 
something. Perhaps a message. 

Meantime the Civil War raged, and the fleets of the 
North filled the Mississippi River and her armies 
penetrated the State. Maybe the summons came then 
from the absent one; for suddenly Mrs. J. disposed of 
all her property, and, with her two little girls, took a 
swift and almost unnoticed departure, got across “the 
lines” somewhere, and disappeared in the far away 
North as had done her husband. 

We have never heard of him or her since that time. 
Whether they rejoined each other, and whether they 
are alive or not, we do not know. We do know, how- 
ever, that if ever an unworthy man was blessed, en- 
riched and actually glorified by the perfect love of a 
noble woman, Colonel J. was that man. 

We never think of her devotion without recalling a 
couplet of Tom Moore: 


“ As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets, 
The same look which she turned when he rose.” 


re 


52 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


As we also recall the deep melancholy of her face, which 
had become so through the coldness and unkindness 
of her husband; and remember how it deepened into a — 
Lopeless look, as through the faithlessness of one man 
the whole world had become black and empty to her; we 
have thought of still another poem of that same match- 
less poet of the heart, as he described the despair of a 
woman whose heart had evidently been broken in an 
identical way. 


This is the last verse, 


“Do I thus haste to hall and bower, 
Among the gay and bright to shine, 
Or deck my hair with gem or flower, - 
To flatter other eyes than thine? 
Ah, no! with me life’s smiles are past, 
Thou hadst the first—thou hast the last.” 


VIt. 
A CLERICAL FRAUD. 


HE individual spoken of in this chapter made a 
sudden appearance at one of the Southern 
Methodist Conferences, bearing with him the credentials 
of a traveling preacher of that denomination, and also 
having in his possession several letters of introduction. 
He was a man of about thirty or thirty-five years 
of age, fairly good-looking, with decided intellectual 
and oratorical gifts, and having what might be called 
an ingratiating manner. He seemed desirous of pleas- 
ing. 

The Bishop took to him at once, and begged of his 
Cabinet a good appointment for the stranger who was 
knocking at their gates. He especially desired that he 
should not be sent to a town in the swamp country, lest 
his health be injured. Accordingly he was appointed 
to one of the strongest churches in one of the pleasantest 
and healthiest cities in the bounds of the Conference. 

In taking charge the Rev. Mr. H., who was a 
widower, as he reported, was boarded in the sumptuous 
and hospitable home of Mrs. L., a leading and wealthy 


member of the flock. Mr. H. had with his other lug- 
53 


54 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


gage a large lady’s trunk, filled with the clothing of 
his deceased partner. Mrs. L. aired the really rich 
and beautiful garments every few weeks, and as H. 
would pass along the back gallery and view the dresses, 
shawls, mantles and other articles strung upon the 
banisters, he was observed repeatedly to put his hand- 
kerchief to his eyes, and seemed nearly overcome. Dead 
though the wife was, her memory evidently was very 
precious to. the bereaved husband, and his emotion 
gained him great credit with Mrs. L. and other 
observers. 

In his pastoral and congregational relations Mr. H. 
took mainly with the old and the young. He made 
special efforts to win these two classes by grateful atten- 
tions to the former, and a delightful friendliness and 
familiarity with the latter. The middle-aged class of 
the church did not take to their new pastor. Among 
them were a number of spiritual people, who said that 
his sermons were fine but did not reach the soul; that 
his manners were agreeable, but they left the impres- 
sion after contact with him, that he was not sincere, 
and that his politeness was affected or put on. 

Meantime the congregation increased, worldly peo- 
ple flocked to hear the brilliant orator, the choir was 


magnified, much singing talent enlisted, great bunches 


A CLERICAL FRAUD. 5 


of roses bedecked the pulpit, and charming entertain- 
ments were provided for the young people. 

While the elderly members of the church as a rule 
were delighted with their preacher, there was an excep- 
tion in the person of old Brother C., who was down 
en “the whole innovation,” as he called it, and was 
especially sore about the flowers in the pulpit. He 
said it was an abomination. Of course the preacher 
had these remarks repeated to him by his special 
friends. 

One Sunday morning Mr. H. met Brother C. in the 
vestibule. The pastor was loaded down with some elus- 
ters of roses and several large bouquets which had just 
been given him in front of the church. Desiring to 
speak to some ladies in the porch he turned to Brother 
C., and, laying the flowers in his hands, begged him in | 
his most bewitching way to please place them on the 
pulpit for him. The venerable old trustee looked like 
he had received an electric shock, but grasping the 
roses in his hands he marched up the aisle and de- 
posited them on the rostrum stand in full view of a 
most intensely amused congregation. The pastor him- 
self seemed to be bathed in smiles, though Brother C. 
was not affected one particle in that way. This was 
patent to all. 

The preacher’s success in filling the pews, and build- 


56 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


ing up certain social departments of the church drew 
some of his ministerial brethren to look at his audience 
and study his methods. One of these visiting preachers 
(now a Bishop) was invited to preach. He did so, 
while H. led in prayer, abounding in striking expres- 
sions as he did in his sermons. This time the memor- 
able sentence which the Bishop to this day quotes was, 
“We thank God that when man went astray, Merey fol- 
lowed him.” 

Among the Bishops of the Southern church at the 
time of which we are writing was one who had a re- 
markable faculty in scenting sin and discovering im- 
postors. The writer once heard him say he could tell 
a fraud by his shoes. This badge of guilt, however, 
was used by him as a corroboratory rather than a pri- 
mary sign. He refused to explain the telltale feature 
of the shoes, and will doubtless carry the secret to his 
grave, as he is now far advanced in years. 

Some kind of rumors reached this Bishop, whom we 
will call X. We do not know but they came from let- 
ters of Bishop X himself asking for information about 
the character of the new preacher’s work. Evidently 
the answer was so unsatisfactory that the Bishop wrote 
to one of the leading stewards that he was coming up 
on the next day’s train to look into matters. The stew- 
ard, gratified at the reception of a letter from such a 


A CLERICAL FRAUD. ow 


high quarter, told it to his wife, who repeated it to her 
special friend, who whispered it to her crony, and so it 
went until, in a few hours, the information came to 
the ears of H. himself. It was told him on the street 
hy one of his admirers, who saw nothing but a compli- 
ment to H. in the episcopal visit. 

The news, however, had a very strange effect on H.., 
who instantly became deadly pale, excused himself, 
looked at his watch, and soon after was seen in a hack 
driving up the street. A few minutes later he appeared 
at Mrs. L.’s residence in a very agitated condition, and 
telling her that he had received distressing tidings call- 
ing him away for a while, he departed with his baggage 
and his dead wife’s trunk, leaving Mrs. L. weeping on 
the front gallery. An hour later the Rev. Mr. H. was 
on the train with his two trunks, flying northward at 
the rate of forty miles an hour. 

The next day Bishop X. arrived to find his bird 
flown; while on the northern mail came a letter to a 
prominent citizen asking if a man answering to H.’s 
appearance was figuring as a preacher in one of the 
churches, and stating that the writer of the letter was 
the wife of H., who had deserted her and carried her 
trunk away with him. 

Of course this was all a great shock to the commu- 


nity, and the cause of Christ was wounded, while the 


58 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


children of God mourned. Many in the church said, 
“T told you so.” Brother C.’s stock went up at once 
with a bound. Some ardent friends of H. refused to 
believe a word of the exposure, while Mrs. L., good old 
soul as she was, made the most remarkable speech of all. 
Confronting an excited group, she cried out, “What 
made them find out all this about him; he was doing 
well and giving perfect satisfaction; why didn’t they 
let him alone ?” . 

As for H., after going northward several hundred 
miles he took another road and returned south, and 
twelve or eighteen hours afterward rolled into New 
Orleans, still a preacher, but this time a Baptist min- 
ister. His credentials and letters of introduction all 
purported that he belonged to that denomination. 

In a few days he became pastor of a congregation, 
began to draw at once, and became the idol of the 
worldly part of the audience. This time he was a 
single man, and his name was changed from H. to 
Copeland. 

In two weeks’ time the lightning stroke of a sudden, 
unexpected exposure fell upon him, the papers printed 
it, and the telegrams flashed the sickening news over the 
country. Some one who had seen him as ‘HH, the 
Methodist, was stricken all but breathless in listening 
to him one Sabbath morning as Copeland, the Baptist. 


A CLERICAL FRAUD. 59 


The hunted, unhappy being fled again, boarding a 
north bound train. The young men in the town which 
he had deceived as a pseudo Methodist heard he was 
coming by on the cars and prepared to meet him at the 
depot with a bucket of tar and bedtick of feathers. But 
their intended victim had taken the lightning express 
and passed their station six hours earlier than expected, 
and so again a richly deserved punishment was escaped. 

He next appeared in a Tennessee town as a local 
preacher, with parchments and all the other necessary 
papers required to substantiate the claim. He was 
elected superintendent of the Sunday school, and be- 
came engaged to the daughter of a wealthy church 
member. He succeeded in his deception here just three 
months, when one of those letters in female handwriting 
arrived addressed to the postmaster, asking if a man 
of H.’s description was there. Before the owner of the 
trunk could swoop down on the deserting husband, Hy 
learned that the inquiring epistle had arrived, and that 
the postmaster had replied affirmatively; when the 
wretched being started to run again. This time the 
young men of the community, who were indignant at 
the wrong perpetrated against one of the finest girls 
in their town, caught the fugitive as he was trying to 


board a train, and plastered him with such a covering 


60 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


of tar and feathers that his best friend would not have 
known him. 

After that there came a single rumor that he had 
appeared in a town in Canada, had begun again his 
work of deceit, when in some way he was found out 
and he had fled in the night. . 

These things transpired in 1874 and ’75. Since that 
last flight H. has never been heard of again. Whether 
God grew weary of him, and took him from the world 
which he was cursing; or whether in his next effort he 
succeeded, and is now the acceptable pastor of some 
town or city church, we do not know. We only know 
that for twenty-six years he has dropped out of sight 
and hearing as though he had toppled over the horizon, 
and fallen from the world into bottomless space. 


* * * * * * * 


In reviewing this man’s life we have often thought 
that if his misdirected energies had been projected in- 
stead into proper channels he would have been a bene- 
diction to countless thousands and caused a multitude 
to rise up and call him blessed at the last day. 

We read of a person who spent twelve hours in mak- 
ing a counterfeit two and a half shilling piece. We 
also recall hearing of a negro who consumed an entire 


night in stealing three sticks of wood, when the honest 


A CLERICAL FRAUD. 61 


labor of a day would have secured him a cord instead, 
together with a good night’s rest after his toil had ended, 
and a quiet conscience at that. 

So we have thought of H., that if he had devoted 
half of the time, and part of the skill and force and 
labor which he was using to deceive people and do 
wrong, intoright directions, he would have been as great 
a joy and comfort to the church and mankind as he had 
been a cause of distress, confusion and mortification. 
If his remarkable force and generalship had gone 
purely into ecclesiastical channels he would have been 
elected a Bishop; or if the push, energy and devotion 
to his purpose of fraud had been run in lines of piety, 
he would have won the white robe and golden crown 


of a saint. 


VRE 
A REMARKABLE CONVERSION. 


E was a heavy-set man, with square face, beetling 
brows, keen grey eyes, and complexion bordering 

upon the florid. There was nothing in the muscular, 
almost day-laborer appearance to suggest the idea of a 
first-class intellect lying back undeveloped in the mas- 
sive and almost shaggy head; and no one would have 
dreamed that the man possessed a passion for flowers 
and exquisite taste for paintings of first-class merit, and 


all real works of art, whether they were the creations” 


of the brush or the chisel. 

Along with this ardent love of the beautiful, was a 
sinful nature that would assert itself at times, and rush 
on its reckless, thoughtless way with the sweep of a 
storm or flood. 

While still a young man he enlisted in the army at 
the time of the Mexican War, and under Scott or 
Taylor marched and fought in that land. Having no 
fear of God before his eyes he had also no fear of man, 
and gave a vast deal of trouble to the military authori- 


ties. He was a brave soldier, but with cyclonic ten- 
62 


A REMARKABLE CONVERSION. 63 


dencies and movements toward all restraints of custom 
or law. 

On one occasion he stole away from camp, and scal- 
ing the wall of a great Catholic cathedral, broke 
through one of the lofty windows, and descended inside 
the sanctuary, having used the head of the apostle 
Peter as one of his stepping stones downward. As we 
remember the account, he injured the statue and dis- 
arranged its drapery. But to these misdeeds he scarcely 
gave a thought, as he almost instantly became absorbed 
in the study of a number of old paintings that hung 
upon the walls. Hours fled unnoticed by the enrap- 
tured man, until he was suddenly discovered by the 
priests and attendants. 

An arrest followed, and later still a trial which had 
both civil and military features in the way of punish- 
ment, and it surely would have gone very hard with the 
transgressor had not a lady of the nobility exerted her 
influence in his behalf. Hearing that a common soldier 
had broken into a cathedral and spent hours in the 
study of works of art, she insisted he was no ordinary 
man, and setting in motion strong influences, secured 
the soldier’s release, and very likely the sparing of his 
life itself. 

All this failed, however, to operate as a check on L.’s 


wild career. He went onward in the same thoughtless, 


64 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


sinful course, until suddenly a simple, touching cir-— 


cumstance brought about the complete change of his 
hfe. 

A soldier had died and was being buried, while his 
company, drawn up in ranks, stood around the grave. 
As the body was being lowered a small Bible was ob- 
served resting on the breast and near the folded hands 
of the dead man. 

L. asked what it meant, and was told that the book 
was the Bible, and it had belonged to the mother of 
the soldier; that when he was dying he requested that 
it should be placed over his heart, and buried with 
him. 

The instant that L. received this simple explanation 
the tears gushed into his eyes, and he gazed into and 
at the grave like one fascinated. 


After the platoon firing over the freshly made mound, 


L. marched back to the camp with his comrades, but ~ 


returned a deeply convicted man. The sight of a Bible 
on a dead soldier’s breast had done the work, when every 
other effort put forth by earth and heaven had failed. 

His sorrow of heart and agony of mind over his sinful 
life were pitiful and remarkable to behold. One day 
he borrowed a Bible and plunging into the woods until 
he came to a remote place, attempted to read the Word. 
But it seemed a locked volume to him and only added 


Pyro te 


A REMARKABLE CONVERSION. 65 


to his torture. With deep groans he rolled upon the 
ground and cried aloud that he was lost. 

At last the idea occurred to him of opening the book 
at a venture and trusting to find direction and relief 
through the first verse which met his eyes. He did 
so and the passage which his distracted gaze fell upon 
was: 

“Kphraim is joined to idols: let him alone.” 

As L. read what seemed his death sentence he fell 
again upon the ground with awful groans, feeling that 
he was a doomed man. But seized with a sudden im- 
pulse he took up the open Bible and, placing the verse, 
“Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone,” directly 
over his heart, he rolled over on his face and cried out 
with a wail which rang through the forest, “O Lord, do 
the best you can for a poor sinuer,”’ when instantly 
salvation rushed into his soul, his burden was gone, and 
the woods echoed with his shouts and hallelujahs. 

When L. returned to his native State, after the close 
of the Mexican War, he joined the church and entered 
the ministry. It soon became apparent to his Confer- 
ence that in the rough-featured itinerant, a preacher 
bad come in their midst of transcendent pulpit ability. 

Whenever sent to a new appointment his massive, 
rather heavy face and careless mode of dressing and 


cating were decidediy against him, and first opinions 


66 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, 


apie it was like a king uid his throne, and when y 
he came out it was like a general and conqueror fresh 
from a great victory, loaded down with spoils. The — 
man had glowed like a seraph for an hour, and swept a 
everything before him with a flood of resistless logic — 
and eloquence. 

The writer was a young preacher when he first heard — 
this pulpit giant; and to this day recalls the intensely 
thoughtful face, the flashing eye, the glow of the counte- _ 
nance, a peculiar tremulous note in the voice when at — 
his best, the wealth and aptness of his synonyms, the — 
wonderful fullness of his vocabulary, and, above all, 4 
his tremendous power over an audience, which he a 
stirred and swept as a wind would a field of wheat. 

Two things we never failed to observe about this man 3 
when he was on his feet speaking; one was that the 
instant he opened his lips people listened; another was _ 
that upon all his auditors rested the conviction that the - 3 


spiritual wealth. He had the unmistakable look and — > 
bearing which comes from conscious reserved force. a 
Some speakers sit down after a sermon leaving the im- — 
pression that they, the audience and the subject itself q 
are all exhausted. But L., after flooding the minds of “ 
his hearers with new light and enriching their hearts a 


A REMARKABLE CONVERSION. 67 


with treasures from the opened up Word, would con- 
clude, leaving the congregation with the delightful feel- 
ing that they had been granted, figuratively.and com- 
paratively speaking, just a crossing over the threshold; 
just an entrance into the hall or upon the first floor; 
while galleries, corridors, rooms and upper stories re- 
mained still for future exploration and possession. 

Many were the sinners he turned to God, and wonder- 
fully did he build up God’s people in faith and service. 
The simple announcement that he was to preach at 
Conference was sufficient to crowd the church to sufto-. 
cation, while the one predominant feeling of the assem- 
bly, when he closed the Bible after a sermon of an hour 
and a quarter, was that of regret that he was ceasing 
to speak. 

Whether from overstudy, overwork, or something 
else unknown to the writer, a peculiar disease attacked 
L. when in middle life, and in the zenith of his useful- 
ness. His great intellect went under some kind of 
shadow, a partial blindness fell upon him, and he had 
to be led about and cared for almost like a child. He 
eould not recognize faces, and did not know loved ones 
who were nearest and dearest on earth to him. He 
could not be trusted alone on the street, and could not 
find his way from one room to another in his own home. 


The magnificent mind became almost a total wreck, and 


68 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


all who knew, loved and admired him in his palmy and m 
glorious days, could not refrain from tears as they now 
contemplated him in his helplessness and childlikeness. — 

There was one thing, however, that remained about 
him of his former life and power, and which, when- 
ever witnessed, filled all beholders with wonder and 
praise as well. This strange thing was that the instant 
the hour of family worship arrived, and the good wife _ 
placed the Bible on his knee, the strength of a spiritual 
Samson seemed to come upon him, and, after fervently 
quoting a number of Seripture passages, he would 
kneel down and pour forth a prayer so tender and full 
of unction, so remarkable in its felicity of expression, 
so towering in spiritual thought, and so torrent-like in 
its sweep from him upon others, as to fill the hearers 
with amazement and delight. Grace asserted itself 


Bee SRS Ee 


above all the ruins of Time, as beheld in the mind and 
body, and behold! the soul was seen to be greater than 
all. What some thought were dying flashes of a sinking 


sun, was really the glorious beams of a marvelous 


sees Pee 


morning, whose light was even then peeping over the 
rim of another and eternal world. 

This strange occurrence taught also a most important 
truth, and that was, that the work wrought by the 
Almighty on this soul in the forests of Mexico was not 
only a blessed but a lasting one. When the weeping 


A REMARKABLE CONVERSION. 69 - 


penitent fell on his face and cried, “O Lord, do the best 
you can for a poor sinner,” that prayer was wonder- 
fully answered. 

Such was the character of the divine performance 
that day in the southern wilderness, that forty years 
afterward when the mind was shattered and the body 
swiftly tottering to the tomb, the beautiful blessed work 
of grace rose victoriously above all, as a lovely banner 
has been seen floating majestically and triumphantly 


over a riddled and crumbling wall. 


IX. 
A SUDDEN RECOVERY. 


E was an itinerant preacher in one of the Southern’ — 
Conferences. In mentally reviewing his various a a 

gifts, talents and general acquisition of knowledge, he pe 
began to feel convinced that justice had not been done “ 
him in past appointments. Merit of unmistakable a 
character had not been recognized, and reward not be- 
stowed where it was richly deserved. 
The more he brooded upon these things, his excel- e 
lences and abilities, with the failure of the Conference 3 
to recognize his worth, and station him where he prop- 
erly belonged, the more convinced he was of the wrong — 
done him, and the contempt shown for eminent fitness — 
for the best appointment in the State. As there was 
no contradictory voice within, the preacher, whose a ' 
was Richardson, carried the motion or resolution unan-_ 
imously in the invisible legislative chamber of his sole 
So it was that the brother attended the next session 
of his Annual Conference fully persuaded of the fore- 
going facts and highly expectant of a promotion that “a 
would thrill himself and stir the whole assembly of 


preachers. 
70 


A SUDDEN RECOVERY. vias 


All went well until the last day of the session, when, 
to his unutterable amazement, the hero of this sketch 
was read out by the Bishop to the poorest of the entire 
list of appointments ! 

For a time the man could scarcely credit his hearing; 
but finally rallying himself, he took up his saddlebags, 
walked out from the church, mounted his horse, and 
turning the animal’s head toward his home that was 
twenty miles away, jogged down the road a stunned, 
grieved and indignant man. 

After several miles of profound silence he raised his 
head defiantly in the air and, speaking to himself, said, 
“T will not go!” 

An inner voice said, “What are you going to do? 
Will you quit preaching when God called you to do so ?” 

“No,” he snapped in reply, “I won’t stop preaching. 
JI will go out on an independent line. I will not let a 
Bishop and Conference treat me in such a way. I'll go 
home, raise my own corn, meat and potatoes, support 
myself and preach to the neighbors and colored people.” 

“But this is not what you vowed to dc when you were 
ordained and taken into full connection in the Confer- 
ence,” whispered the inner voice. 

Whereupon Brother Richardson became quite exas- 
perated in spirit, and replied fretfully, “I don’t care if 
itisn’t. I will not be humbled and degraded in this way 


12 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


by men. I'll show them that I am independent of the ‘ 


whole business, and will preach more than I ever did 
before.” 

“But,” insisted the voice, “you solemnly swore you 
would go where the Bishop sent you, and your failure 
now to do this has a moral ney about it, and the dis- 
obedience savors of transgression.” 

Full of vexation the rider jerked his horse and exiaa 
aloud to his inner tormentor, “I am no J onah running 
from preaching. Did I not say I would give the Gospel 
in full measure to the colored people?” 

So the mental battle raged until he reached the gate 
of his home, passed through, stabled his horse, and, en- 
tering the house, threw ‘his saddlebags in a corner and 
sank with a heavy sigh into a chair. 

His wife’s first remark, as she saw him, was, “Where 
did the Conference send us, Mr. Richardson ?” 

His grum reply was, “Where I’m never going, 
madam.” 

“What!” she exclaimed. “Not going to your cir- 
cuit ?” 

“No, madam, I have not the least idea of doing so,” 
and forthwith told her of the Hardscrabble appointment 
so unworthy of him, and his determination not to go, 
but to remain at home, make his own living, and preach 


to the colored people. 


A SUDDEN RECOVERY. te 


As he finished his Jeremiad he said, in a plaintive 
voice, “I am feeling far from well to-day.” 

The wife contemplated him silently for a few mo- 
ments, and then, rising to go about her housework, re- 
marked solemnly, ““You had better go to that circuit, 
Mr. Richardson,” and left the gloomy man to his reflec- 
tions. 

His bad feelings increased so rapidly that in a little 
while he had to lie down on a lounge, where he sent 
forth a number of sighs and groans. 

His wife, passing through the room an hour later, 
observed his plight, heard his moans, but failed to be im- 
pressed with his sickness. Instead of that she dropped 
the exasperating advice as she walked out, “You had 
better go to that cireuit, Mr. Richardson.” 

Now all this was very trying to Mr. Richardson, who, 
miserable in mind, and fancying himself sick, wanted 
consolation and even anxiety manifested on the part of 
his wife for himself. If she had come and sat by him, 
and said he looked badly and rubbed his forehead and 
said he was wearing himself out and forcing himself 
into the grave ahead of time, that would have done him 
a world of good. For many husbands take a peculiar 
joy in having their wives alarmed about their health. 

But Mrs. Richardson would not be alarmed; but 


moyed serenely about here and there through the house 


74 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


in the discharge of her various duties, and allowed her 
husband to keep up his lonely and restless tumbling on ~ 


the lounge. . 

Finally, as she was passing through on one of her 
trips, he said to her, “Mrs. Richardson, I am a much 
sicker man than you think.” 

This appeal so dear to the masculine heart, utterly 
failed to reach the partner of his joys, who, quickly re- 
plying, “You will feel better when you go to that cir- 
cuit,” disappeared from the room. 

As night came on Mr. Richardson’s sickaess and gen- 
eral bad feelings increased. So that nothing would do 
but a negro boy should be mounted on a horse and sent 
post haste after a doctor. 

Now, there are doctors, and doctors; just as there are 
preachers, and preachers. We all know the difference 
and prefer the other class in both professions. The phy- 
sician thus hastily summoned was most ordinary in 
every sense of the word. As for diagnostic skill, he had 
scarcely a particle. So, after listening gravely to Mr. 
Richardson’s groans, feeling his pulse, looking at his 
tongue and thumping his chest, he pronounced him a 
very sick man and measured out some white and yellow 
powders in certain square pieces of white paper with 
instructions to take during the night. His medical 
opinion, given before he left, was that Mr. Richardson 


A SUDDEN RECOVERY. 75 


had a severe heart attack, at which statement the 
preacher gave another groan. 

When the doctor left Mrs. Richardson went to her 
bedroom and promptly retired. 

The next day was spent in groans by the prostrate 
servant of God, whose mind was filled with pictures of 
flying Jonahs, deserting Marks, forsaking Demases, not 
to mention Judas, Ananias, Esau and Cain. The inner 
voice also was talking incessantly about broken Confer- 
ence vows, loss of the respect of his brethren, pride get- 
ting a fall, and other distressing things. 

Late in the afternoon of the second day the wife went 
through the room of the sick husband with that 
strangely unconcerned and unalarmed look on her face. 
If she had just been anxious about him and looked ap- 
prehensive, the invalid would have felt better, but in- 
stead she acted as if she did not think there was really 
anything the matter with her liege lord. Worse still, 
even after he had been suffering over twenty-four hours 
on his couch, and his groans had filled the house, she 
on this second afternoon of his misery, remarked, as 
she walked through the room, “Mr. Richardson, you had 
better go to that circuit.” 

This was too much, even for a well man, to bear, so 


he turned sharply upon her and said, “Mrs. Richardson, 


76 REMARKABLE OCCURRENC cS. — 
I would thank you, please, to attend to your own b 
” 


fess it.” _ 

To resume the story: The second night was worse — z 
than the first; so that at midnight the negro messenger 
was dispatched for the doctor on behalf of the tumbling, “4 
tossing, groaning patient on the lounge. 4 

At 1 o’clock the physician arrived, and, after another _ 
study of the ministerial phenomena before him, he 2 
stated gravely to Mrs. Richardson that her husband was 
a dying man, and would breathe his last before 10 if 
o’clock in the morning. He told her he could do noth- oe 
ing but leave a few powders to partially relieve the a 
preacher’s misery, and would come back again in the | 
morning, although he knew he would be dead before he — 
would arrive. ay 

After the doctor left Mrs. Richardson promptly went 
to bed again in another room, and the afflicted husband 
was left alone, save for the company of Jonah, Mark, — 
Demas, Ananias, Esau, Cain and Judas Iseariot. 


A SUDDEN RECOVERY. it 


The unhappy man rolled and pitched ; told God many 
times that he would preach to the colored people; that 
he would make his own living and not be a burden on 
His providence; that he was tired of being discounted 
and trampled upon by men in authority, etc., ete., ete. 

He heard the clock strike 3, 4 and 5, and still in 
sleepless misery he sighed, moaned, twisted and turned 
upon his couch. He wanted to die. He said so aloud 
in the dark. Evidently he had forgotten the colored 
people. ; 

Just then the day began to break. Lying on his 
lounge he saw the first faint beams in the east, when 
suddenly, in obedience to a sweet, gentle impulse in the 
heart from the Holy One of Heaven, he rolled off the 
couch, fell flat upon his face on the floor, and cried with 
a loud voice, “Lord, I will go to that cireuit !” 

When instantly the Holy Ghost filled him! He was 
on his feet in the flash of a second, leaping around the 
room, laughing, crying, shouting and praising God, and 
well, perfectly well, transcendently well, from head to 
heel, and from tip to tip of his entire being. 

It was unquestionably a case of Divine Healing of the 
highest order, and yet it was also a fact that the 
preacher took some very bitter medicine just before the 
Lord restored him. The healing, being of the Savior, 


no one need be surprised that it was a sudden recovery. 


A few minutes after his instantaneaus restorati 
health, Brother Richardson was in the backyar 
ting kindling for the kitchen stove. A little late: 
was assisting his wife to cook breakfast. At 9 o’¢ 
he had bidden his wife an affectionate farewell, 
thrown his saddlebags on his horse, and was mount 
with the head of the animal pointed towards Hardser 
ble Circuit. At 10 o’clock he was five miles on the ro 
to his new work, when the doctor arrived at the house 
according ‘ to appointment and prophecy, to see th e 
corpse. : 


X. 
THE FAT OF THE LAND. 


HE was a bright, chatty girl, living in and for so- 
ciety, when she met the new pastor of the Methodist 
Church in the town where she resided. He was a good 
man, and devoted to the work of saving souls, while she 
had but little of what is called common sense, and not a 
particle of piety. 

Being bright, however, vivacious and good-looking, 
she exercised some kind of spell over the plodding 
young man, and in the marriage which followed another 
one of those melancholy mismatches was made which 
abound in the marital world. An eagle and a magpie 
would have been better mated, or an aerolite and a fixed 
star. 

Their characters, tastes, companionships and lives 
were entirely different. The man wanted the solid and 
she the froth and foam of life. He loved souls and she 
preferred bodies. He lived for Christ, the church and 
the spiritual good of mankind; and she liked ritualism 
and impressive forms on the Sabbath, and doted on re- 
ceptions, dinings, concerts and gatherings of all kinds 


pertaining to the social world. She had a little income 
79 


80 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


of her own of ten dollars a month, and this she loved to 
use in giving what she called a “tea,” in which a me 
indigestible lobster salad, strong green oolong, and light — 
bread cut into slices of most amazing thinness contrib-— 
uted the main features. What was lacking in solid 
nourishing food was made up in painted lamps, tinted — 
shades, heavily draped windows, portiered doors, and a 
kind of oriental canopy hung over a rickety lounge. 
Another substitute for food was the rendering of a cer- — 
tain kind of music by some females in a very feeble and — 
quavering manner, but which Mrs. Phipps, the hoses 
pronounced “divine.” a 

Mr. Phipps, the preacher, took neither to the “teas,” 
the household draping, nor the home concerts. He tried — 
several of the entertainments to please his wife, but had — 
such a forlorn, far-away look on those elegant occasions, 
and there was such an intellectual and moral chasm be- — 
tween the friends and companions of his good lady and :: 
himself, that he was allowed after several trials to at- 4 
tend to his parochial work, or to labor in his study un- — 
disturbed. 

After a few years Mr. Phipps was sent to a cireuit _ 
which consisted of four country appointments, while he , 
secured board for himself and wife in a town not in 
the bounds of his work. This necessitated the purchase : 


= 


of a horse and buggy, and occasioned long absences from 


THE FAT OF THE LAND. 81 


home of the preacher, who drove over the hills, thread- 
ing the pine forests, and sought out and visited every- 
where his humble membership. Many of his people 
were farmers, a number were lumbermen and wood- 
choppers, and all were poor. But they all had souls, 
and their pastor looked at that side of the case, and la- 
bored for their salvation lovingly and unweariedly in 
the face of a thousand physical discomforts. 

He slept on hard beds, ate rough fare, walked and 
rode until his body ached, and braved every kind of 
weather. But he got near to the people at the family 
altar, talked religion with them in their corn cribs and 
by their spinning wheels, prayed by their sick beds, 
buried their dead, and became the most weleome and 
honored of guests in hundreds of humble cabin homes. 

Meantime the active, out-of-door life, the nutritious 
though plain fare, the constant work of doing good, all 
agreed so well with the preacher that he never looked 
healthier nor felt better in his life. He gained thirty 
pounds of flesh, while there was a light in his eye and a 
ring in his voice which operated like a tonic on the 
hearts of weary-hearted and discouraged people. 

At the same time Mrs. Phipps was steadily growing 

-thinner and whiter on her lobster banquets and light- 
bread frolics. Much of her old-time vivacity now spent 
itself in moods that were querulous and snappish. The 


82 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


difficult to please was her soul. ; 

The day finally came that the sight of the pastor’s — 
wife sitting near her husband would at once suggest _ 
to the most careless observer the well-known almanac — 
advertisement picture of “Before and After Taking.” — 
One morning she said to him, with brow all puckered — 
and speech acidulous: . 

“Mr. Phipps, there is just no use in talking. You 
are leaving me here to starve to death in this boarding 4 
house, while you are flying around among your church — 
members and living on the fat of the land.” d . 

Such a vision came to Brother Phipps of corn dodgers 2 
and hominy as his wife said “the fat of the land” that F 
he broke into a hearty laugh. But the joyous outburst — 
confirmed the now irate lady in her previous impression, — 
and she was more than ever convinced that she had — 
guessed aright. 

The incident led to the pastor’s requesting his wife — 
to take one of his trips with him, which invitation she q 
readily accepted. 4 

The first few miles was pleasant enough, but when the ~ 


preacher turned from the main road and penetrated the. 


THE FAT OF THE LAND. 83 


residences, Mrs. Phipps’ face began to wear a reflective 
air. 

Brother Phipps seemed to know everybody on the 
lonely roads and in the humble-looking dwellings. He 
stopped to exchange a few words with young and old 
and informed his disgusted wife that a number of the 
people belonged to his church. 

An hour before nightfall the sun began to east long 
shadows from the lofty, sighing pine trees, while the _ 
whippoorwills commenced their plaintive notes as dusk 
approached. None of these sights or sounds helped 
Mrs. Phipps, who by this time was not only tired, but 
hungry and in the neighborhood of tears. 

They finally reached a creek bottom in which was a 
farm of ten or fifteen acres mainly planted in cotton. 
In the center of the field was a log cabin with a pun- 
cheon gallery and mud chimney, from whose wide 
mouth a blue smoke was ascending. There was no sign 
of a gate, but the preacher, putting his hands to his 
mouth, began to halloo, “Oh, Brother Wills!” 

This was repeated several times, when at last a voice 
was heard far over in the cotton field near the creek, 
answering “‘Hee-oh!” Later the tall cotton began to 
bend hither and thither, and first Brother Wills’ head 
and shoulders and then his entire body emerged at the 


84 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


end of the furrow, and close to the encompassing ten- 4 
rail worm fence, common to that country. 

Brother Wills’ first greeting to the pair as he turned 
his sun-bronzed face upon them was: 

eight. 

Brother Phipps, with responsive cheeriness, “lit,” 
shook Brother Wills’ hand and helped his wife out of 
the buggy. That good lady came forth with about as 
much spring and elasticity as there is in a bag of lead. 
Leaning on her husband’s arm, she whispered : 

“Are we to stay in that rail pen up yonder to-night ?” 

The husband replied under his breath: 

“Tt is the best house in ten miles around. It has two 
rooms and a gallery.” 

Meantime Brother Wills, who was in his shirtsleeves, 
began throwing the fence down, and driving the buggy 
through the gap. After this the horse was taken out, 


the vehicle pushed out of sight in the cotton, and the 


farmer, leading the animal, preceded his guests up a 
path which wound through the field, with many a curve, 
to the house. As Brother Phipps stole a glance at his 
wife on the way, he saw that her face would have won 
a prize as a model for “Stony Despair.” 

Reaching the humble dwelling, Brother Wills made 


many loud and hearty expressions of welcome, bade 


on 
ad 


THE FAT OF THE LAND. 85 


them come in, take ‘“‘pot luck” and “help themselves to 
all in sight.” 

As they entered the main room of the cabin, Mrs. 
Wills was revealed sitting in a hide-bottomed chair card- 
ing cotton, with a large sunbonnet on her head. She did 
not rise, but bade her guests in a hearty manner to 
“come in, take a cheer and make themselves at home.” 
After a half-hour’s social chat that but for Brother 
Phipps and Wills would have perished early, Mrs. Wills 
suddenly laid aside her cotton cards, and with her bon- 
net still on her head began the preparation of supper. 

Mrs. Phipps was faint with hunger and mental 
worry, but when she was invited to “draw up and help 
herself,’ she found she was unable to partake of 
the food before her. She could not eat fat pork and 
boiled cabbage; while cornbread was one of her horrors. 
The bread served up at their evening meal was what is 
called ash-cake, a hard pone baked in the fireplace. This 
with some sickly smelling coffee, constituted the ban- 
quet. 

Poor Mrs. Phipps! The tears fell from her eyes as 
she pleaded fatigue and loss of appetite, and was al- 
lowed to withdraw to a corner by herself, and rest in 
a straight-backed, hide-bottomed chair. 

Meantime Brother Phipps and Brother Wills talked 
over the prospects of “Mt. Olivet,” “Shiloh,” “Bethel,” 


86 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


and the other churches on the circuit, while the b ead 


and cabbage steadily disappeared. 

That night the preacher and his wife were placed to 
sleep in the small shed room back of the apartment | 
which had already served for parlor, dining-room and 4 
kitchen, and was also the bed chamber of Brother and — 
Sister Wills. After an hour of wakeful and intensely — 
thoughtful silence upon the part of Mrs. Phipps, her — 
husband, with none other but a spirit of self-vindication, 
whispered to her in the dark: 

“How do you enjoy the fat of the land?” 

Whereupon the angry woman turned her back upon 
him, and, burying her head in the pillow to deaden the 
sound, burst into tears. ; 

The breakfast next morning was like unto the supper 
of the previous evening. But Mrs. Phipps could not 
be persuaded to break her fast. Seated in the buggy a 
few minutes afterward, and asked by her smiling hus- 
band if she desired to go still farther on his cireuit, she 
replied with averted eyes and frozen mouth: 

“Home as soon as possible.” 

Lt; required the soothing influence of several lobster 
festivals and parlor cantatas and recitals before Mrs. 
Phipps regained her former equanimity. But with the 


recovery of her lost composure, it was also noticeable 


THE FAT OF THE LAND. 87 


that with it had also come an unmistakable change or 
gain of something. 

One effect of the country trip was the unquestionable 
dropping of the husband out of all wifely thoughts, 
plans and caleulations. He was in a sense with her as 
though he did not, exist. 

A second effect was seen in some kind of mental con- 
clusion the woman had reached, which, whether true or 
false, she accepted as incontrovertible, and now rested 
upon as a Gibraltar. It was revealed in a kind of set 
speech which after this she was fond of giving on any 
and all occasions, but especially at one of the salad and 
green tea banquets. It was to the effect “That as there 
are monstrosities in nature, so there are men and women 
born to be coarse in all their tastes and habits. That 
people drift and gravitate by natural and inevitable 
law to plain food and uncultured people, if they them- 
selves are ordinary and uncultivated. That persons 
are always to be found among those who are most simi- 


b) 


lar to them in taste, temperament and character,” etc., 


ebe!, ebe: 

Her argument made one’s partiality for pork, cab- 
bage and buttermilk to be unquestionable proof of a 
vulgar nature, while fondness for lettuce and shrimp 
salad, with oolong tea, declared just as unmistakably 


the refined, esthetic soul and superior gentleman and 


88 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


gentlewoman. Her reasoning, of course, abased her — 
husband while exalting herself; and, graver still, com- — 
pletely subverted the sacrificial life of Christ, the self- — 
denying labors of Paul, and the faithful work of every — 
true Christian, who is found in the slums and gutters, 
in dens and brothels, in hard places and poor-paying 
appointments, laboring with the vilest and most obdur- 
ate, for the betterment, the uplifting and the salvation 
of poor fallén humanity. 

Mrs. Phipps still continues to give her little “Teas,” 
terminating them with a “Reading” or a rendering of 
musical selections where the ordinary ear utterly fails 
to recognize a ghost of a tune or a shred of melody. Mr. 
Phipps is still visiting the sick and hunting up and re- 
lieving the poor. Mrs. Phipps has solved, to her own 
obvious satisfaction, a great problem of life. Anyhow, 
she thinks she has done so. Meantime Mr. Phipps has 
a much greater problem on hand. It has never been 
solved, according to latest reports. His problem is Mrs. 
Phipps. 


XI. 
HE TOOK THE WRONG ROAD. 


N the tangled mazes of a Southern swamp it is a grave 
thing to take what is called the wrong road. Even 
in thickly settled communities such a mistake means 
great inconvenience and delay, but when a like blunder 
is made in a wilderness abounding in impenetrable cane- 
brakes, and crossed in every direction with dangerous 
sloughs, a much more serious state of things exists, in- 
volving not only loss of bearing, but increasing bewil- 
derment, a night in the woods, and even loss of life it- 
self. 

In the realm of character or in the way of salvation 
the “taking the wrong road” is necessarily far more 
perilous and disastrous. It means, in the beginning, 
that a wrong moral choice or decision has been made, 
which, if persisted in, brings spiritual ruin on earth, 
and the final damnation of the soul in hell. Some have 
escaped the last woe “as by fire,” but whole years had 
been lost, the reputation hurt, the influence damaged, 
the character injured and the life itself blighted and 
blasted by the entrance upon and pursuit of a wrong 


course of action. 
89 


90 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


We were attending a large camp-meeting located in 
the piney woods in the South when we first met the per- — 


son about whom this sketch was written. The writer 
was a young preacher, and was appointed one afternoon 
to preach. The text was a double one, “Go thy way for 
this time”—“Depart from me.” The first thought pre- 
sented was in reference to the peculiar power possessed 
by the soul to shut God out of the heart and life and 
keep Him out. The second point made was relative to a 
retribution suggested by the text and that was confirmed 
by the Bible, history and individual experience. We 
were treated in life as we had done to others, and God 
dealt with us as we had acted toward Him. If we said, 
“Go thy way” to Him and His messengers, we could 
fully expect to hear the Judge say at last, “Depart from 
Me.” 

We remember in dwelling upon the human side of 
Retribution to have mentioned several remarkable oe- 
currences of our own personal now that greatly 
solemnized the audience. 

Fully fifty to sixty preachers were present, and 
among them one who was the acknowledged leader of 
his Conference. He was invariably sent to the best ap- 
pointments, and had been elected to the General Confer- 
ence. To the young preacher’s surprise, this prominent 
minister, whom we will call Dr. Graves, took him aside 


HE TOOK THE WRONG ROAD. 91 


after the service, and sitting together on a log in the 
edge of the woods, asked him, after some random re- 
marks, whether he really believed that we were made to 
suffer as we had caused others; and that events of an 
identical nature came back in punishment upon us. 

We were surprised, not so much at the question as at 
the troubled appearance of the man. The anxious and 
even suffering look he turned upon us made a deep im- 
pression then, but not as much as it did in after years, 
when other things threw a stronger and explanatory 
light upon the occurrence. The fact that a much older 
and a very prominent minister should be speaking with 
us about the sermon and its effect upon his mind and 
heart, naturally prevented that closer observation which 
would have been given under other circumstances. The 
reply given to him was exactly in the line of the dis- 
course, that we were treated in this world exactly as we 
had dealt with others. That it was both justice and 
mercy combined that this should be so in the providence 
of God. That the lesson was to make us consider the 
rights, feelings and happiness of others. That it opened 
our eyes to consider other people as well as ourselves; 
and we would never know how we had made people 
suffer until we had been crushed in a similar manner. 

We felt in talking that we could not be giving light 
and knowledge to the distinguished man before us, but 


92 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, — 


he most skilfully drew us out, until having fortified our — 
position with Bible instances and some awful transae- 
tions we had personally known, we became more than 
ever aware of his gloomy looks, and ceased to speak. 


ve 


Some one called to him at this moment, and he left 
with a “Good afternoon” and a grating laugh that we 
have never forgotten. 

A year subsequent to this we met again, accidentally, 
in the office of a merchant. This last-named business 
man was so profane that the writer abruptly quitted the 
store and remained on the pavement until Dr. Graves 
rejoined him. We said in explanation of our hasty de- 
parture that we made it a rule to withdraw at once from 
the company of a man who would take the name of God 
in vain in our presence. 

Dr. Graves, who had given uneasy laughs in the pres- 
ence of the swearer, said in reply to the writer, “That 
the early Methodists used to act in the same manner.” 

Several years after this Dr. Graves preached one 
night before a large assembly of preachers from the 
text, “Oh, that my people had hearkened unto me, and 
israel had walked in my ways.” It was one of the 
driest, hardest and most hollow-sounding sermons we 
ever heard. It had not one particle of unction about it, — 
and fell flat and dead upon the congregation. 


Two years later a gentleman of high Christian stand- 


HE TOOK THE WRONG ROAD. 938 


ing told the writer that Dr. Graves had come to his 
office in great trouble of mind, and said that he wanted 
to confess something; but receiving no encouragement 
from him, he had departed without doing so. 

Ten years later still, the writer, having become an 
evangelist, was invited by Dr. Graves to hold a meeting 
im his church. The city was far distant, but we ac- 
cepted the call, and opened the battle. 

In a few days it was apparent to all that Dr. Graves 
was in great mental or spiritual distress. Guessing the 
cause, we preached one night on the necessity of con- 
fession, and the advisability of taking a whole night for 
prayer. We argued that just as some things would 
not be cast out of us except by fasting and prayer, so 
there were certain spiritual victories that would never 
come without a mighty and protracted struggle; that 
the ordinary, every-day supplication of a minute would 
not answer; that it would require a Jacob-like wrestle 
running through an entire night. 

Dr. Graves heard the statement, and without consul- 
tation with any one, acted upon it. He spent the night 
in prayer. 

Next morning, as the writer and his singer were walk- 
ing up the street together, Dr. Graves passed them in 
his buggy. Hus appearance was simply shocking. His 


face had a ghastly, yellowish hue, his cheeks were 


94 REMARKABLE cocumataai a 
sunken, and dark rings were about his eyes. The-loo k 
was that of a corpse. If the Doctor saw us, he never 
showed any recognition. We were especially st 
with the hard, set expression of the man’s mouth. 
As he passed down the street out of sight, we said to’ 
_ the gentleman by our side: 
“He will not make that confession.” 
He replied, “What do you mean?” ; 
We answered, “He has had his fight last night and — 
did not get the victory. He met the duty of confession : 
face to face, counted the cost of obtaining the blessing q 
of holiness, and has concluded that it was too much, — 
that he cannot afford to pay it.” 
At the morning meeting Dr. Graves appeared with a 
large theological work under his arm. During tes-— 
timony, instead of witnessing to the grace of God as did 
others, he stood up, opened his volume, and read some 4 
passages adverse to the doctrine we had been preaching 
and to the experience his own people were receiving. 
After that Dr. Graves developed into what is called 
“A Holiness Fighter.” He engaged in endless, bitter 
controversies, and stooped to loud-voiced street argu- 
ments against the blessing. He not only preached 
against it, but would tell the advocates and professors 
of the experience that they did not have it, and ac 
company his speeches with a grinding, grating and in- 


HE TOOK THE WRONG ROAD. 95 


sulting kind of laughter that was most painful to hear. 

Of course this conduct is not surprising to the one 
who knows and studies the human heart. If Holiness 
is true, a man must either obtain it or find reasons for 
fighting it. It will not do to say that we believe in it, 
and not seek it. On the other hand, if this great grace 
of God demands of the soul a complete surrender, a 
perfect humiliation of self for its obtainment, and that 
soul in a public place or high position cannot get its con- 
sent to pay such a bitter price, while friends, acquaint- 
ances and congregation are looking on at the struggle, 
what is left such a person but to fall back on some musty 
old volume of theology, give a flat denial to the blessing 
and take up arms from that moment against the relici- 
ous movement itself? This explains the attitude of 
many to-day who spare not the doctrine of sanctifica- 
tion with tongue or pen. 

As the years went by, Dr. Graves’ frenzy seemed to 
increase against sanctified people, and he did his best 
to destroy their work and prevent their holding meet- 
ings where his jurisdiction extended. 

One of the last letters he wrote was to the writer, 
warning and forbidding him to hold a Holiness camp- 
meeting in a tabernacle that had been erected within his 
pastoral limits, or boundaries. 


The people pulled up the tabernacle stakes and reared 


96 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. _ 


and dedicated the building in the cireuit lines of a 
preacher who promised them protection, and the meet- 
ing was held. God came down and many souls were 
saved and sanctified. 

Meantime Dr. Graves raged on. He even tried to 
have a revival. But only a handful came out to hear — 
him, the church was dark, cold and empty, and the meet- 
ing ended, as it began, without any life, and was felt 
by everybody to be a flat failure. 

Meantime a few of the Holiness people let slip from 
their tongues a heart-sickening prophecy. The speech 
finally reached the ears of Dr. Graves. It seemed to ex- 
asperate him. A few days later, while in attendance 
upon the annual convention of his church, he said 
openly on the streets of the town: 

“The Holiness people say that God is going to take 
my life very soon. Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed, while 
striking his breast, “I never felt healthier or stronger 
in my life!” 

Within a month’s time he was in his grave! 

He took the wrong road early in life, and though 
God in mercy brought him to fork after fork where 
choosing aright he might have recovered himself and 
gotten back to duty and happiness, yet, with a persist- 
ency that was amazing and horrifying, he would in- 


variably decide against conscience, the Gospel teaching 


HE TOOK THE WRONG ROAD. 97 


and the strivings of the Holy Spirit; and so taking the 
way that was not right, followed a course which led him 
continually farther and farther from God. 

His friends erected a tombstone over him, and carved 
upon it a flattering epitaph. But the sentence that 
many felt would have best described his life is to be 
found in the caption of this chapter: 

“He took the wrong road!” 


b. GUE 
A SKETCH OF A CHILD. 


MONG the nations of the earth there is to be found - 
another, whose citizens, while dwelling in every 
country, speaking the language and keeping the laws of | 
the land, yet remain not the less a distinct and peculiar ~ 
people. 3 
This nation is a commonwealth of sufferers! It is 

a multitude of individuals, male and female, young and — 
old, that by the inheritance of some mental or physical 
malady, or by some accident, or through the power of a 
desperate sickness in time of childhood, have been smit- — 
ten, wounded and marked for life. It is a company — 
that by no fault of its own has been ruled out forever — 
from the active pursuits of the world, and shut in to an 
existence of painfulness, helplessness and loneliness. ‘ 
There are few families that have not one of these _ 
bruised ones of earth; and we have observed that there 
is a peculiar love and tenderness felt for, and speciai — 
watchfulness extended over, the little unfortunate who _ 
may be afflicted in mind, lame or sightless, or doomed oa 


to perpetual silence. 
98 


A SKETCH OF A CHILD. 99 


Very beautiful and pathetic have been sights of this 
character beheld by the writer. One was that of a little 
girl who, banished from the world lying all around her 
by some physical affliction would sit upon the floor and 
lean her head against the knee of her mother for an 
hour at a time. The mother on one occasion was at- 
_ tending some of our Gospel meetings, and her eyes 
full of love but shadowed with a wistful, sorrowful ex- 
pression would often rest upon the child, while her hand, 
as she listened to the word of God, would wander with 
a gentle, lingering touch to fondle the nestling head by 
her side. 

Another scene comes to the mind which was beheld 
many times on the gallery and in the front yard of a 
neighbor. The gentleman referred to had a child who 
had some spinal affection, and which required that she 
should be kept strapped upon a plank. Here she would 
le not only at night but all through the day; and as 
the family could not afford a servant, the child did not 
have the ministry of a nurse, and so of necessity re- 
mained in one trying position through the long hours, 
watching the busy mother and waiting for the evening 
to come when the father would return home. 

The devotion between the two was remarkable; he 
a great strong man, and she a little helpless mite. How 


her pale face would light up, and how his would glow 


100 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


and his eyes fill as the poor tired arms would reach up, 
entwine his neck and the form nestle against his bosom — 
as much as the hard stiff board would allow. He was — 
an overworked man, and came home tired and with — 
dragging steps, but the sight of the tiny sufferer on the 
plank would act like an elixir and inspiration to him. 
In another minute we would see him pacing the gallery — 
with his precious burden in his arms that she might — 
breathe the fresh air, or walking about under the trees 
that she might hear and see the children at play on the 
pavement, listen to the birds, watch the stirring leaves 
and catch a glimpse of the quiet beauty of the twilight 
sky. 

In both of these instances we could but notice as we 
have in many other cases before and since, how these 


7 
little sufferers are crowned and sceptered monarchs in e 
their way. Their rule is wonderful in its sweep and 
power. Before them selfishness has to depart, while the 
better, purer, nobler emotions and powers of the soul ‘ 
are awakened and developed in the highest degree. They 
are a nation with a mission to other nations. Their 
reign, if accepted, is one of benediction to the individ- 
ual, the family circle and to the human race.» 

¥ * * * + + n 

Marguerite was the baby in the family, and the love- 


liest of those that had preceded her. When she was still 


Cibiee al « 


A SKETCH OF A CHILD. 101 


in arms her beauty was widely commented on, and many 
were the remarks made about her smile, which when 
overspreading her face, made it one of remarkable fasci- 
nation and power. 

At the age of six months through a misstep of one 
who was carrying her along a dark hall, both fell, and 
the child received a violent blow on the head against 
a hard cemented wall. There was, of course, the ex- 
pected weeping upon the part of the baby, but she was 
soon comforted and the circumstance of the fall forgot- 
ten; when in a few days it was noticed by an anxious- 
eyed observer in the household that the little one was 
carrying her head strangely; that the chin was slightly 
upraised and the back of the head drawn backward. 

Two skillful physicians were at once called in, and 
both pooh-poohed the anxieties and fears of the family 
away, and easy breaths were once more drawn. But, 
alas for the superficial knowledge possessed by the most 
celebrated medical men concerning this profound mys- 
tery, the human body. In a week’s time the child 
was stricken down with cerebro-spinal meningitis, and 
her life despaired of. The first physicians of the 
city attended the case, a nurse was secured, while the 
sorrowful-faced young mother would hardly consent to 
be relieved a minute day or night of the precious suffer- 


ing burden on her lap. 


102 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


Great and prolonged was the battle for the life of the — 
little one, and for weeks Death was felt to be not only 
at the door, but in the room. The fearful experiences 


of those hours, the anxious and grief-stricken faces of 
the home circle, the grave face of the doctor, the toss- 
ings and sighings of the baby, the periodic clink of the 
spoon and glass, the low voiced directions of the physi- 
cian, the stifled sob in the sick room, the sound of weep- 
ing from a distant part of the house, and the muffled 
noise through closed doors and windows of the street 
outside, all weave themselves into a memory so full of 
anguish that to this day, after the flight of ten years and 
more, there are those who cannot bear to summon it 
back. Like portraits whose faces break the heart to 
look upon—this recollection or life picture has been 
turned to the wall. 

Finally, when all hope was gone, and the last breath 
was expected every moment; the crisis was past, and to 
the amazement and joy of physician, nurse and family, 
Marguerite lived! But even while tears of thankfulness 
were pouring down the cheeks of the home circle, it 
was discovered that the child had become sightless. She 
was blind. The beautiful brown eyes saw nothing that 


was held up or moved before them. Then, as the days 


rolled by, other powers were discovered to be gone. 
Here was bitter sorrow coming right on the heels of 


sua 


A SKETCH OF A CHILD. 103 


joy; and the thought with many friends was, would it 
not have been better far for her to have died ? 

The family moved away to spend the summer on 
the seashore. It was hoped the sweet, pure, invigorat- 
ing air of the ocean would help the little one to get 
back to health and strength. A cottage was secured in 
Bay St. Louis; and an old French nurse employed to 
give special attention to the afilicted and all the more 
beloved child. The two soon became a familiar spec- 
tacle to the residents of the well-known summer resort. 
Sometimes the turbaned creole would croon her old 
French and Spanish songs for hours on the porch that 

“was shaded by great live oaks and rustling magnolias; 
the child meanwhile lying on her lap almost without 
motion, but with her hazel eyes open and evidently lis- 
tening to every note. 

Later in the day the nurse would trundle the sight- 
less, silent listener in her carriage along the beautiful 
beach, where the only sound heard would be that of the 
solemn wash and roll of the blue waves of the Gulf of 
Mexico, as they swept far up the strand, would retire 
with something like a sigh, and rush back again with 
their deep-toned and melancholy fall upon the shore. 

The child seemed to drink in everything of sound, 
from plaintive ditties, crooning melodies, woodland bird 


songs, to the murmur and call of the ocean whose billows 


104 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


rolled and broke near the wheels of her carriage. At 
this time the breadth of the ocean stretched between — 
the child and her father, though no distance kept her — 
out of his mind. 5 4 

After this the family removed to a large city in the — 
North to live, and then the long silent child began to _ 
_ sing. With a most remarkable silvery and melodious .: 
‘voice she would pour out for minutes and sometimes an 
hour that which had been gathering in the line of har- 
mony in her mind and heart. The strains of the old — 
songs sung in the South to her welled up and out, and 
there seemed to be touching and tingeing them some-_— 
thing she had heard from the birds in the woodland and 
the waves on the shore. 

In addition she seemed ever anxious to hear more, 
and would lie in her carriage in the parlor, or on the lap 
of a loved one, listening eagerly to the street ballads 
and songs, and other musical pieces played and sung 
by her grown sisters on the piano. 

It was amazing to see how rapidly she learned any- 
thing that had melody in it; and though only eighteen 
months to two years of age, her voice not only filled but 
thrilled the house with a loud, clear, accurate and 
sweet rendition of all she heard. It was a bird-like 
voice that penetrated every room, and was all the more 
affecting as she could not speak a word. It was simply __ 


A SKETCH OF A CHILD. 105 


a strain of music she poured forth upon delighted and 
yet deeply touched hearers. 

When out on the street in her carriage, escorted by 
her nurse, it was the same. Lying all helpless, with 
the pathetic brown eyes ‘open, but seeing nothing, she 
would sing as we have heard the mocking-birds sing at 
night in the South. She sang as if her little heart was 
full, while the clear, child-like voice was easily heard 
one and two blocks away. It was a medley concert she 
gave, with “Comrades,” “Two Little Girls in Blue,” 
“Marguerite,” and “Sweet Marie,” together with old 
French songs that no one knew but the Creole nurse left 
down South. But every one was delighted just the 
same, and many eyes filled as they looked down in the 
beautiful, sightless eyes, and heard the wondrously 
sweet melody coming out of the lips of the tiny sufferer 
—one of that mystic band of God’s bruised ones. 

Soon after this period the child began to recover her 
sight, and later to talk. As vision, speech and other 
powers began to be restored and exercised, strange to 
say, the sweet, weird and pathetic singing began to drop 
off, and finally ceased. It was all in vain to coax and 
plead; a sudden shyness had come, and the home song- 
bird stopped its beautiful notes. Perhaps speech, sight, 
motion, and other enjoyments relieved the burdened 


soul, which thus found expression in other ways than 


106 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


in song, but whatever was the cause, the caroling that 


so charmed the family and many others ended. 


As the years slipped by other effects of the dreadful 3 
sickness passed away, but it placed the child at the dis- Be 


advantage of being fully two years behind other children 


of her own age. With this came a certain kind of tim- 


idity, a fearfulness of loud and bold sports, a shrink- 
ing from all such play in which she felt herself not the 
equal in fleetness and strength with her younger sister 
and other girl playmates. 

This led to her retirement from many of childhood’s 
happy games; and to one of the most pathetic of spec- 
tacles; namely, the sight of her little figure sitting aloof, 
watching the children romping at a distance with an 
indescribably wistful look in her shadowy eyes and rest- 
ing upon her thoughtful face. Sometimes, on a cold 
day, when she could not brave the snow and wind out- 


side, she has frequently been seen perched on a window 


seat, peering through the panes at the laughing, frolic 


some set of boys and girls in the yard and on the street 
and with that same longing melancholy look that made 
the heart of the observer fairly ache to see. 

When thus found by some one of the family in the 
lonely window nook, she would bury her face in the 
sympathetic bosom of the mother, father or grand- 
mother, without tears, but with a sigh that went through 


A SKETCH OF A CHILD. 107 


the very soul of the hearer. She was bowing to the 
blow of a cruel sickness which she did not remember, 
but whose sorrowful effect she still languished under. 
It had struck her backwards two years of time. It 
had weakened the limbs, made timid the nature, and 
caused her to be an exile from the ranks of children of 
her own age, and banished her in some respects from all 
of them. 

* * * * * * * * 

Among the stray, cast-off, forlorn animals that tried 
to insinuate themselves into household relations at the 
home of Marguerite was a most dejected looking little 
dog, whose very appearance suggested to most people 
the thought and desire of administering a kick, letting 
fly a brickbat, or vociferating the words, “Get out.” 

The dog was a small one, of a brownish muddy color, 
while his hair of various length seemed to stand out at 
every angle. One of his ears had a flop or droop as if 
bitten or cut in some way. He had numerous marks 
of sealds and burns, with deeper scars that spoke of more 
dangerous weapons than a pan of hot water. The dog 
bore a wary, frightened look, shambled along sideways, 
as if watching all points of the compass, and seemed 
ready to run at the first faintest signal of danger. It 
would be hard to imagine a more pitiable object in the 


canine world than the animal now referred to, who 


108 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. a 


made surreptitious visits to Marguerite’s home in the — 
wild hope that he might be tolerated if not adopted by _ 
the family. 

Of course he received prompt invitations to leave, 
and broomstick handles and other domestic implements 
were brought into immediate use to hasten his 
departure. With a pitiful, despairing yelp he would 
vanish down the street or alley, only to be seen soon 
after peeping in at the side gate toward the brick 
kitchen, or wistfully gazing through the iron fence 
which skirted the grass-covered yard, where the children 
romped and frolicked in the shade. It all seemed like 
Heaven to “Sport”? as the children of the family for 
some reason had dubbed the dog. Poor, friendless, 
homeless, hungry creature, he had no sport, and the 
principal business of his life was to escape missiles of 
every kind, as, driven by the pangs of starvation, he 
crept in at back and side gates in hope of finding a bone, 
or crust of bread. Poor, smitten and chased roamer _ 
of the street, life was nothing but a hard, painful, bitter - 
existence to him. z 

Strange to say, the first one of the entire house- 
hold, whose heart opened to receive Sport was Mar- 
guerite. No one else could tolerate the ugly, dirty- 
looking waif of the back alley. It was noticed that her 
voice had only kind words and tones for him, and her 


A SKETCH OF A CHILD. 109 


land was one that slipped pieces of bread to him, se- 
cured from the table when the meal was over. The 
bruised creature of the street found his single friend in 
the bruised child of the home which he tried to get into 
and in vain. 

No one relaxed toward Sport like Marguerite. The 
appearance of the dog was so against him that, after 
the flight of weeks, the resistance of the household was 
as firm toward him as at the first. At the same time 
it was perceived that every time he was ordered off, 
or kicked out, the face of the child was clouded, and a 
greatly troubled look gathered in her eyes. 

One afternoon the father of Marguerite came sud- 
denly around the side of the house and beheld a scene 
in the corner of the yard that not only profoundly af- 
fected him then, but has remained ever since, a picture 
in the mind that for pathetic beauty and heart-melting 
power he has never seen surpassed. 

Marguerite was sitting on the grass close to the iron 
fence, while Sport, with his body lying on the pavement 
outside, had pushed his head through the metal rods 
and bars and had it resting on the lap of the child. 
She was bending over the half-starved, lonely, de- 
spised creature, patting his head and smoothing his 
scarred back, with her fair little hand. He, evidently 


110 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


full of an humble thankfulness, was receiving the soli- ; 
tary act of pity, kindness and love of his beaten and 
wretched life. The poor, friendless animal, bruised by 
the hands of men, was being comforted by a little child 
who had been bruised under the Providence of God. 

There was an instantaneous gush of tears to the eyes 
of the observer, and a swell and ache filled his heart 
that he had then, and still has no words to describe. 
He stole away from the spot unobserved, feeling that 
he had looked upon a scene which had divine beauty in 
it, and that he had walked upon holy ground. 

Since then it has been easier with him to see how 
and why the sorrowing ones of earth come to the Man 
of Sorrows; why the stricken and wounded of earth 
creep up to and lay their wearied heads and broken 
hearts in the lap of Jesus, who was smitten and hurt 
all his life, and at last put to a cruel death. There is 
a peculiar understanding among sufferers. The Bible 
ealls it a “fellowship.” Anyhow we know that the 
bruised one of Mt. Calvary will never cast off the 
bruised ones of this earth. He bids the lonely, heart- — 
sick man or woman draw near to Him. And coming 
to Him they will find a heavenly lap, where they can 
weep out every sorrow, feel a tender, pitiful face bent 
over them, while a hand with a nail print in the palm 
will with its loving touch lift every burden, take away 


pain and fill the soul with a sweet, holy, restful 


which no human force and influence can give and no © 


A LEE 
A BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING. 


CCURRENCES are continually taking place in 
the moral world that so break into and over what 
we call rules and laws in the spiritual life, and so upset 
certain standards of judgment, that we are for a while 
left almost breathless, and even after that for quite a 
season are disposed to be chary of our ex-cathedra ut- 
terances upon human life and its destiny, and are will- 
ing to allow God to run the world and manage the 
church and the nations for at least several months. 
When we see and hear of people whom everybody 
thought established in the Christian life, going off into 


false doctrines, into various evil habits and into sin and 


unbelief itself; one of those wondering occasions is at 


once beheld. Great is the clatter and chatter of tongues 
for a while. The argument of an establishing grace 
seems to be knocked down. The increased power of re- 
sistance to evil said to come from the practice of right- 
eousness appears for a period to be a mistaken idea. 
And so men are bewildered. 

On the other hand, when we see a man who has lived 


a profane, impure, lawless, godless life for forty or fifty 
112 


A BRAND PLUCKED FROM TILE BURNING ills} 


years, suddenly turn to Christ, get saved and then sanc- 
tified, and live like a saint, die in triumph and go shout- 
ing home to glory, another moral wonder has taken 
place, and another set of laws, oracular utterances and 
solemn prophecies have been upset. 

The devil of course is around to put his interpreta- 
tion on both occurrences, and get people to buy his _ 
commentaries on all such happenings; and yet the prin- 
ciples by which the two sets of laws were established 
are perfectly true, and what we see are only exceptions 
to the rule. In establishing our standards of judgment 
we simply failed to allow for the presence and power of 
an Almighty God not only in the world but in each 
life, and one perfectly able, with his knowledge of the 
heart and his omnipotence in this world, to amaze us 
with the dealings of his permissive and positive Provi- 
dence. 

Moreover, none of these startling things in the spirit- 
ual life about us, but have been already spoken of, and 
fearfully and wonderfully illustrated in the Bible. The 
Dying Thief was snatched from the lowest step of Ruin 
and caught up into Heaven. On the other hand, Saul, 
Judas, and Demas, when well up the stairway of Sal- 
vation, stumbled, slipped and fell with a crash to the 
bottom of an endless Perdition. 


So Satan it seems steals messengers of light from the 


114 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


side of the Lord, while in blessed contrast the Lord’ 
plucks brands from the devil’s burning, and trans- 
forms them into great fixed stars of righteouness and 
truth, to shine forever in the heavenly world. 

The sketch we here present is a gracious instance of 
the goodness and power of God in the latter case. 


was a steamboat mate on the 


A man named § 
Missouri River. No one ever remembered to have seen 
-him at a church, or heard of his attending one. More- 
over, there was nothing about his life to lead one to 
suppose that he ever had a religious thought, or sus- 
pected that he possessed a soul. At the age of sixty- 
five he was as wicked a man as ever stormed and swore 
at a set of hands on the deck of a steamboat. 
One day while the boat was approaching St. Louis 
on a homeward trip, he, without a single premonitory 
sign, was stricken down with that lightning flash and 
thunderbolt of diseases—paralysis. No one thought he 
would live through the remaining hundred miles of the 
trip, nor did he expect anything but immediate death. 
He heard, as it were, the clods falling on his coffin lid, 
and expected that the bottom of his grave would next 
break through and let him slide or plunge into hell. 

On arrival at the wharf a litter was made and four 
men trudged through the silent, empty streets toward 


his home. 


oe al 


A BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING 115 


From the moment he fell on the deck, and with every 


step of his litter bearers, S was praying to God 
for mercy. His constant ery was, “Forgive me, Lord, 
for the sake of Jesus Christ.” Before he reached his 
house, twenty or more blocks from the river, God spoke 
peace to the tortured soul, and S—— was laid upon his 
bed in his room a saved man. 

Some ladies, belonging to the church of the writer, 
who did a good deal of visiting among the sick, heard 
of the case and called upon the sick man. In the midst 


of their visit they happened to speak of sanctification, 


when, quick as a flash, S asked what they meant by 
sanctification ; and they replied that it was a beautiful, 
blessed Grace that God had for His children. 

“What!” said S——-; “is there anything else ?” 

“Yes,” they answered, ‘“‘a second work that purifies 
the soul and fills it with rest and perfect love.” 

Turning a pair of wistful, pleading eyes upon them, 
the gray-haired man said, with a broken voice, “I want 
it; tell me how to get it.” 

They, however, did not feel competent to give direc- 
tions, but said they would send their pastor to call on 
him and show him the way. 

The writer, however, was so busy with the numerous 
and different calls of a city pastorate, that ke did not 
until the tenth day; when, 


reach the home of S 


116 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. — am 


on entering, he found to his surprise and pleasure that | 
the sick man had obtained the blessing alone, without 
any more human assistance. Asking the rejoicing per- 
son lying before us how he did and what he did to — 
secure “The Pearl of Great Price,” he said, with smiles — 
and tears intermingled : 

“T wanted it so bad that I couldn’t wait. So I kept 
saying, ‘Lord, please give it to me.’ Hour after hour 
for eight days and nights, with every waking moment I 
would lie here, look up and say, ‘Lord, please, for Jesus’ 
sake, give it to me,’ and one day, while I was sighing 
and crying and pleading, the blessing came and I have 
been full and overflowing ever since. O, yes, I’ve got it; 
there’s no doubt about it.” 

As the writer stood by the sick bed of this old river 
man, one who had not attended church, knew nothing 
of theology, and had spent his life amid hard and sinful 
men, and yet was here in the possession of a blessing 
that bishops are denying and theologians wrangling 
about, he was filled with such a tide of contending emo- 
tions of wonder and awe of God, and love and praise 
of God, that words could not properly and satisfyingly 
describe. 

We doubt not that the man prayed himself to the 
point of a complete consecration, and we all know that 
from the end of such a rod will bloom and bud the 


A BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING 117 


flower of a perfect faith in God to cleanse the heart 
from all sin and fill the soul with the Holy Ghost. 
Thus, without preachers, sermons, and altar rails, 
Brother S 
ing to Jesus, and led by the Spirit, crossed the Jordan 


, a poor, ignorant steamboat mate, look- 


and entered the Canaan of Full Salvation, or Perfect 
Love. 

After this it became a crowning wonder to visit him. 
From the hour of his sanctification until his death, six 
months later, there never seemed to be a cloud in his 
sky. His joy was not only like an artesian well, but 
overflowed everything, and everybody. It was a bene- 
diction simply to look upon the shining face of the man, 


and a privilege to listen to his conversations, or, rather, 


monologues, for one had only to be with Brother S 
a minute to be perfectly willing that he should do all 
the talking. 

We were not only surprised but amazed as we listened 
to the beautiful, blessed things that fell from the lips of 
the patient and rejoicing sufferer. As we remembered 
the churchless and sinful life, we marveled at the man’s 
spiritual knowledge. Where did he get all these 
gracious thoughts that overflowed in such apt and unc- 
tuous language was the constant query of the mind? 
And the only answer was that here was a man who had 


been emptied and filled and was now taught of God. 


LS ill REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


In the beginning of our pastoral attentions we went 


down to cheer and help the poor old brother, as we 
called him. But on the very first visit the tables were 


turned on us. The invalid helped the well man. The 
gray-haired man we called old had the youth and fresh- 
ness of Heaven in him. Instead of being poor, he was 
richer in faith, love, joy and other heavenly treasures 
than any one of us who entered his sick room. He was 
a blessing to everybody who called upon him, and the 
feeling of the visitor at departure was, that one of the 
windows of Heaven had been opened just above that 
sick bed, and an angel had been met unawares. 

More than once we caught some of our faltering, 
fainting members with guile, as the apostle expresses it, 
by asking them to drop in and see “poor old Brother 
S——,” who was lying in his room awaiting the second 
stroke of paralysis to call him home. They always came 
back open-mouthed and open-eyed, full of wonder and 
praise, and with their own faith stimulated and Chris- 


tian life strengthened at the miracle of grace they had 


just beheld. 

The second visit of the mysterious disease came as 
was expected. It found Brother S—— not only pre- 
pared but yearning to depart and to be with Christ. 
The first stroke found him a sinner and bade him pre- 
pare to meet his God; the second blow knocked down 


ef 
“3 
_< 


A BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING 119 


the door that separates earth from Heaven, and Brother 
S justified, sanctified, exulting and triumphant! 
walked through the open portal, and looked upon the 
face of his Redeemer. 


XIV. 
THE FALL OF PRIDE. 


Cee of the remarkable ways of the world is to 
judge some sins with the greatest severity and 
pitilessness, and with the same mouth condone, apolo- 
gize for, and even exalt other iniquities that will as — 
certainly damn the soul in hell. : 

Theft, murder and adultery will put a man at once — 
outside social and ecclesiastical pales, while pride is 
tolerated, cherished and defended; and yet the Bible 
informs us that by pride fell the angels, and through ~ 
the like sin Adam and Eve lost the Garden of Eden. 
They desired to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree that — 
they might be wise and be as gods. In another place — 
is the statement that God knoweth the proud afar off; _ 
and still more fearful is the verse that “Pride goeth be- _ 
fore destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” 

This pride may take many forms; of birth, family, — 
position, wealth, culture, accomplishments, beauty and — 
intellect, and can even flourish where there is no reason 
whatever for its existence except sin in the heart. But 3 
no matter whether it is the rebellious will which holds 4 


out against God and resists his demands for the humb- _ 
. 120 


THE FALL OF PRIDE. 121 


ling of self, or whether it is the haughty spirit which 
despises the ignorant and poor; all pride is hateful and 
abominable to God. 

The face and hand of the Almighty is against such a 
spirit and life, and hence it is that the Bible abounds 
in records of the downfalls of this sin; and in history 
God is still seen in his Providence, intent upon its humil- 
iation, Judgment and destruction. Even in daily life 
the irony of circumstance, the exposure of accident, the 
unmistakable retribution of human events, and the di- 
rect dealings of Heaven, all agree and point to the fact 
that pride is certain to meet with crushing downfalls. 

In one of our Southern States before the Civil War 
lived a very wealthy planter, who owned one of the 
largest sugar plantations in that part of the country 
called the Coast. He had but one child, a handsome, 
Liack-eyed girl, who was eight years of age when the 
writer first saw her. We met at the home of a relative, 
where she and her mother were spending the day. 

The child, as the heiress of an immense estate, and 
possessed of great personal beauty, had been much flat- 
tered and petted, and so became badly spoiled. She 
carried, even at that early period of life, an au- 
thoritative, not to say arrogant air, and assumed the 
manner of one of the queens of the earth. 

The writer, who was the same age as herself, had the 


129 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


misfortune that morning to offend her majesty in some 
way; whereupon she flashed upon him such a pair of 
indignant and angry eyes that the lad, overwhelmed, 
went down ingloriously before her, and actually crept — 
under a large center table where a heavy cloth covering 
almost touching the floor hid him from her view. She — 
walked around the captive boy several times in a 
triumph of spirit, which he felt, or imagined he felt, 
clear through the heavy drapery which concealed him. | 
Finally she said, in a sovereign-like tone: 4 

“You can come out now; I forgive you.” 

And the lad, profoundly humbled, came forth to 
light and life again. The queen, or empress, was dis- 
posed to be gracious but the captive was disgusted with — 
royalty and left the little virago the monarch and soli- 
tary possessor of the empty room. 3 

A few weeks afterward the boy went with his mother 
to dine at the parental residence of the sugar plantation — 
empress ; but while the grown people got along pleasant- E, 
ly and amicably together, the released captive, with 
liveliest recollections of his former imprisonment, kept — 
a wide distance between himself and his former en- 
slaver. If he could prevent it, he was determined that 4 
no such exercise of royalty should be visited upon him _ 
again; so the lad wandered about under the majestic 
shade trees and over the lawn, and feasted his eyes on 


THE FALL OF PRIDE. ZS 


the billowy ocean of cotton and cane that stretched for 
miles in every direction. 
Several years aiter this came the Civil War; then the 


“Surrender,” 


and the freeing of the slaves. These oc- 
currences swept away much of the family fortune, but 
as Mr. A., the father of the empress, had great land 
possessions, he was still a very rich man. 

Of course, the daughter, with her remarkable beauty 
and large wealth, did not lack for attention, and so she 
swept along her triumphant way looking and acting 
more like a royal personage than ever. Wherever she 
went she left a whole string of bleeding masculine 
hearts behind her, and all more or less broken in reality 
or imagination. 

Soon after this came a piece of news about her that 
was so surprising that hundreds of tongues were set 
going for months. The tidings was that the heiress 
had become engaged to a prominent and unexceptionable 
young man of her own set, the marriage was celebrated 
in the stately old home mansion in the most elegant and 
sumptuous way, the guests departed at midnight, and 
the household retired. But the next morning the young 
and newly-wedded couple parted forever. They never 
ate a single meal together, and never saw or spoke to 
each other again. By mutual consent a divorce was 


speedily obtained. And to-day, after a lapse of thirty- 


Pr . 
a4 a3 


124 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. — 


7 


eight years, the world is no wiser than it was then, as 
to the cause of the unhappy separation. t 
Both were persons who could keep a secret, and if the 
father and mother understood the cause of the trouble — 
they never told any one. The nearest friends and rela- — 
tives were kept in ignorance of this strange, melancholy — 
piece of family history. Of course there was much — 
guessing and speculation, but conjecture is not cer- 


‘ 
tainty. The conviction, however, was general that the | 
man was not at fault, but the trouble lay at the door of — 
the haughty, hasty, imperious spirit of the empress. | 
Some years later the young man married again and 
has to-day, we are informed, a happy home and lovely — 
family circle; but the empress never embarked in matri- — 
mony again. : 
Several years after this the parents died and left 
the young woman the lonely occupant of the great man- 
sion where she had so long reigned and witnessed so 
many of her social triumphs. She became quite a 
recluse, and it would not be difficult to imagine the 
loneliness of her heart and the emptiness of her life. 
One of her sorrows at this time came on the line of 
retribution. When people saw that she avoided them, 
they in turn left her to herself. The world has a way 
of striking back, and does not propose to grieve and 
break its heart over one of its absentees. When people 


THE FALL OF PRIDE. 125 


take the notion to become hermits and draw away from 
others in a sulky mood, the rule is to let them go and 
have the spell out with themselves. This, of course, is 
provoking to the sulker, and especially to one who has 
had his or her own way for ever so long, but it is cer- 
tainly good for the sulks itself. It also brings practical 
and very valuable lessons to the sulker. 

The empress, however, remained a proud woman, and 
if the Spartan Fox was biting and eating, the cloak was 
wrapped around the gnawing and the gnawed spot, and 
no word was uttered. 

Other sorrows still awaited the abdicated sovereign. 
The lawyers, in settling up the estate of Mr. A., found 
that the whole property was heavily mortgaged, and 
for far more than it could possibly bring for its sale. 
In better times something handsome might have been 
realized for the daughter, but the period of foreclosure 
was at a time of general financial depression, and so, 
after the business settlement, it was discovered that 
nothing of the great estate was left. The empress was 
without a throne, and stripped of an income. In a 
word, she was homeless and penniless. 

She never asked relatives or friends for assistance. 
We doubt not if she had they would have helped her; 
but pride came in again and would not allow the humil- 


jation. It is hard for one who has been a queen to 


126 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


become a dependent; for one who has sat on a throne — 
to sit down as a second table kind of guest or hanger-on 
of some family. The young woman found something 
in her that made such a course impossible; so she went 
to a large city and took in sewing for a living. 

But she was no skilled seamstress; she had owned 
servants who had performed all that kind of work for 
her, and the littie she had done was not sufficient to 
make her anything like a swift and accomplished 
needlewoman. And so she could not make enough to 
properly support herself. Her comparatively inferior 
work caused her to lose patrons. Repeatedly she had 
to walk long distances to collect a single bill owed her 
by some wealthy woman, who did not dream of her 
former wealth and station. They were the empresses 
now, and she had to submit to their fault-finding, high 
words, and royal way of walking around and over ordi- 
nary folks. 

She was finally compelled to move to a garret, 
cold, bleak, ill-furnished and generally miserable. Here 
she spent the last two years of her life in the vain at- 
tempt with her needle to keep body and soul together. 

One day she was missed, and then another, and still 
another. On instituting a search they found her lying 
dead on her bed. Not a scrap of food, nor a single cent 


THE FALL OF PRIDE. 127 


of money could be found in the room. The signs were 
that she had died in great agony. 

On holding a post-mortem examination, the doctors 
announced that she had died of actual starvation ! 

When the friends and relatives in their distant homes 
and plantations heard of this dreadful end, they were 
profoundly shocked and distressed. But their grief did 
not alter facts. The empress had perished for lack of 
the common necessaries of life. She had slowly but 
surely starved to death. 

Her friends and kindred bought a beautiful casket 
for the dead young woman, and had a silver plate put 
on the coffin lid, with the words, “At Rest.” As to the 
truth of its application we can only hope; but concern- 
ing the appropriateness of another inscription, and one 
taken from the Bible, there can not be the shadow of a 
doubt. The verse is found in Proverbs and reads as 
_ follows: 

“Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit 
before a fall.” 


XV. 
THE MAN IN A BOG. 


N the swamps of Mississippi there are bayous and 
cypress brakes that are crossed by the traveler with 
difficulty in the best seasons of the year, and that in 
the rainy period of winter cannot be forded at all. To 
slip from the low bridge of logs laid over these sloughs 
means an immediate and hopeless miring down in the 
black, sticky mud. Even the wild denizens of the forest 
know better than to venture into one of these marshes 
to quench thirst; while domestic animals, like 
horses and cattle, if once entangled in such a quagmire, 
are doomed. For, while it is true that the “bog” has _ 
not the depth of the quicksand, yet it is deep enough 
and strong enough to hold the struggling creature fast, 
and bring all his frenzied efforts to escape to naught. 
With strength exhausted after many violent surgings 
and plungings, the victim seems to recognize its coming 
fate. So with a few additional feeble struggles, each 
one weaker than its predecessor, and now already half 
buried in the black ooze and slime, the unfortunate ani- 


mal lies still, awaiting death, while buzzards perched 
128 


THE MAN IN A BOG. 129 


upon surrounding trees tarry for the last breath before 
beginning their ghastly banquet. 

Sometimes a human being gets into the toils of the 
marsh or bog, and finds it to be a grave. One instance 
out of a number comes up most vividly to the memory 
of the writer. 

His aunt owned a plantation twelve miles from the 
county seat. To this place she was accustomed to send 
much of her cotton by means of ox wagons. On a cold 
winter day one of her teamsters drove an accustomed 
load to town in a wagon drawn by three yoke of oxen. 
After rolling the bales into a warehouse, the driver filled 
his vehicle with boxes and barrels of groceries, and 
started back late in the afternoon for the distant planta- 
tion. At nightfall he came to a place where he had 
the choice of mounting a long, steep hill, or taking a 
near cut through the swamp. The fact that the last 
mentioned road was nearer, was level and missed the 
lofty hill, decided the teamster, but he forgot how the 
constant autumn and winter rains had been at work on 
the turfy, sticky marsh, and had made it a quagmire 
almost impassable for any kind of vehicle, much less 
a heavily loaded wagon. 

When he turned his team into this dark swamp road, 
this was the last seen of him in life. He did not arrive 


at home that night, nor at noon the next day, and so 


130 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


a party started out on horseback to search for him; and — 
a little before dusk they came upon the following ghastly 
sight : 

All of the oxen were mired down. Two were dead. 
The wagon was half tilted over, while the wheels on 
one side were so sunk in the bog that the hubs were out 
of sight. Several barrels and boxes were on the side 
of the road, a few fence rails were scattered about where 
the driver had been trying to pry the wheels out of the 
deep ruts, and close by, lying flat on the mud, with his 
face upturned to the sky, was the negro stone dead! 

He had gone to the farther side of the wagon, where 
the marsh was deepest, and there had stuck fast. From 
all the signs he had evidently made desperate ef- 
forts to get released, but, becoming weaker with every 
effort, found himself unable to pull his limbs out 
of the sticky death-trap, and so, in exhaustion and de- 
spair, fell backward and slowly froze to death. It 
required the strength of several men to draw the corpse 
from the bog, which seemed to hold the dead body with 
its black, entwining arms and reluctant to give it up. 

There are worse bogs than those in the Yazoo Delta. 
There is something deadlier than a Mississippi marsh. 
There is a morass which not only destroys the body but 
damns the soul. It is called Sin! In it not simply in- 


THE MAN IN A BOG. 131 


dividuals, but nations, are floundering, sinking, and 
perishing ! 

Men are caught in different sloughs and brakes of 
iniquity, but it is the same old sticky, blinding, chok- 


ing, 


strangling, murdering bog of Sin. The rule is that 
he who goes out far, never gets back to the shore of 

safety. He sinks deeper with every oath, with every 
“unclean thought, with every wrong word and act, and 
with every glass of liquor. % 

If it is the intemperance slough he is in, he flounders 
for a while, makes promises, swears off, joins societies, 
begins afresh on the New Year, and then on his birth- 
day, but after all these endeavors at recovery, and in 
spite of all, he goes out farther, and settles down deeper 
in the bog than ever before. Men wave their hands to 
lim and warn him, but all to no purpose. Their calls 
seem to be unheard and anyhow unheeded. 

Meantime the efforts of the victim himself, to escape 
from his entanglements, become feebler, until finally 
every eye can see that all struggling has ceased. The 
man seems to realize that Sin has mastered him, and 
now lies down in its ooze and slime to die in silence and 
despair, while devils roosting around wait for the last 
breath, to pounce upon and fly off with the lost soul. 

We once knew a young man who was a trusted book- 


keeper in a large store. He was the support of a wid- 


132 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


owed sister and her three little girls. No father or hus- 
band could have been more thoughtful, kind and de- 
voted. In addition to the comfortable home provided 
for them, he was considerate of their welfare and pleas- 
ure in many other ways too numerous to mention. 

This young man, whose name was K., was exceed- 
ingly social in nature, with a leaning towards conviv-— 
iality. Bright, witty, well read, and good-looking, he 
was greatly sought after for dinings, receptions and 
parties, and was indeed one of the first names among 
the gentlemen written down when lists of guests were 
being prepared. “We cannot get along without Mr. 
K.,” was a speech uttered not only many times, but in 
many quarters. 

In men’s clubs and midnight suppers K, was in equal 
demand; and so it was that between the two he grew 
first familiar with the different wines and then fond of 
their taste and effect. 

It was at this time we vividly recall him as popular 
with the various social circles in town, he was kept busy 
answering their invitations and meeting their demands. 
We saw him whirling along in carriages with ladies, 
and dashing past in buggies with gentlemen, and to all 
appearances absorbed and delighted with the life. 

Again, we often beheld him on the street at an even- 


ing hour observed by the society element in the com- 


THE MAN IN A BOG. 133 


munity as a time for public promenading. Whenever 
we saw him in these perambulations with young men 
and women, he would be talking earnestly, often laugh- 
ing immoderately and affecting his companions with a 
like spirit. 

We recall even at this length of time a growing 
redness in his face, and an _ increasing ner- 
vousness and abruptness of manner. He presented the 
appearance, as we now can see, of a man living in a 
state of highest tension. A certain glassy look of the 
eyes and tremulousness of the hands, were confirmatory 
signs of the dissipated life. Already the man was in 
the bog! 

Several years passed away, and a marked change was 
observable in the family of Mrs. D., the sister of K. 
She had resumed the anxious, sorrowful look which had 
been banished for a while after the death of her hus- 
band by the devotion of her brother. She not only 
quit visiting, but avoided company altogether, while 
the signs of scant living and seedy clothing were unmis- 
takable both in herself and the little girls. The house 
was still kept scrupulously neat and clean, but one could 
not walk through the dining-room and kitchen without 
feeling in a strange sort of way that both larder and 
store room were empty. The sideboard had nothing on 


it or in it, but a few chilly white dishes, while through 


134 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


the blue wire of the safe not a sign of bread or meat was 
visible. 

It was also noticeable that K.’s dress was not as it 
formerly had been; but bore the appearance of long 
usage and of having been repeatedly mended and 
cleaned. The seams of his coat were glazed, his shoes 
showed patches, and the hat was dotted with grease 
spots. The truth was that K. was parting with nearly 
all his salary for the privilege of living in the bog! 

It was most pathetic at this time to see how the man’s 
sister and nieces would meet him when he came home 
from the store in the evening. The children were de- 
voted to their uncle, but feeling the change in him, knew 
hardly how to act; while the sister clung to him, but in 
a way that has been described as “hoping against hope.” 

During this interval we never knew the man to laugh 
oftener and more immoderately. Especially was this 
true as he stood on the street corners with his compan- 
ions, or was whirling past in a buggy with some chum. 
The instant he turned his face homeward a change 
would come over him, and while with those who loved 
him best and whom he was so cruelly wronging, he 
would be taciturn and moody. If spoken to, he would 
break forth in little nervous laughs that were harder 
to hear and bear than his silence. 


About this time a number of family circles dropped 


THE MAN IN A BOG. 135 


him, while others of a lower social grade took him up. 
While he said nothing, we doubt not that both oceur- 
rences sank like sharp arrows in his heart. 

Soon after this he lost his position at the store. The 
merchant told him that he had for quite a while been 
making grave mistakes in his entries in the books, and 
in his accounts with customers, and he could not afford 
to employ him any longer. And so, from being chief 
bookkeeper at a salary of two hundred dollars a month, 
he was thrown out in the world without a penny. 

The distress at the home was simply indescribable. 
The sister, Mrs. D., took in sewing, and the elder of 
the girls was taken from school and put out at service. 
The man who had been the support of the household 
now became the sponge of the family. His sister 
washed and ironed his linen, prepared his meals, slim 
enough as they were, and met him at the door at all 
hours of the night as, hiccoughing, grumbling, fault- 
finding and swearing, he would fumble around in the 
dark, unable to find the lock. She always met him 
kindly; and without a word of complaint or reproach 
would let him in and lead him to his bed, where he 
would sleep off his drunken stupor by the middle of the 
day. 

All this time the man was getting deeper in the bog. 


Everybody could see it, while he apparently did not, 


136 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


but went on perfectly oblivious of his present shame, 
his increasing degradation and certain coming ruin. 
With crimson face, disheveled hair and soiled and 
neglected dress, he was one of the most familiar objects 
on the street corners; and when not so drunk as to be 
in the gutter, as he often was, he would be laughing 
immoderately in a crowd of dissipated men like himself. 
We have seen him almost bent double while giving vent 


to these explosions of merriment, if the hollow, heart- 


sickening sound he made could be called by that name. ~ 


But his laughter on these days was often of a solo char- 
acter; for as men looked on the moral wreck before 
them, they had no heart to join in mirth over his jokes 
which, by the deadening effect of alcohol on the man’s 
brain, had lost not only freshness and vigor but the 
point and meaning itself. 

After this came several spells of delirium tremens. 
No maniac ever looked so terrible as did this man when 
the awful power of mania potu fell upon him. He 
raved, screamed, dashed the furniture to pieces, 
crouched in corners with pleading, staring eyes, and 
cried: 

“They are after me! Take them off me! Mercy! 
Mercy! Merey! Oh, horror! horror! horror!” 

And then he would wallow and foam in agony on the 


floor. 


THE MAN IN A BOG. 137 


The bog had the man! 

After recovering from one of these spells, and look- 
ing like a corpse, and shaking like an aspen leaf, he 
would go right back upon another spree. 

Some of his friends took him into the country and 
kept him for weeks amid the quiet, peaceful scenes of 
pastoral life. There, amid tinkling sheep bells, bloom- 
ing orchards, cooing doves, whistling partridges and 
purling brooks they hoped to recall him to himself and 
to a better life. But the instant he returned to town 
he would rush to the drinking dens, beg, borrow or get 
money some way, and in a few hours would be picked 
up insensible out of the gutter. 

Some who recall him at this time will never forget 
the emaciated figure, the zigzag movements of his 
body in walking, the sudden stops and startings off, 
the audible talking to himself, the spasmodic jerking of 
his head, with periodic pullings of his beard while at- 
tempting to look grave and wise, followed by a burst of 
senseless laughter on his part and a louder explosion of 
merriment from thoughtless boys on the street, who 
were watching and following him around. It is all so 
melancholy and dreadful that we pen these lines deserip- 
tive of an actual life history with the deepest pain. 

The last attack of mania potu came after he had been 


drinking heavily for weeks. It required the strength 


138 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


of several men to keep him from leaping out of the win- 
dow and otherwise killing himself. He thought his 
tongue was a dog, and tried to cut it out with a knife. 
He cried out that “Snakes were in the room, and erawl- 
ing toward him!” And with eyes dilated with horror 
and screaming “Help! Help! Help!” he would leap 
and dash himself here and there in the effort to escape 
from their imaginary presence until the perspiration 
streamed down his face and body, and he looked as if 
he would die from fright. 

It was vain to speak to or lay the hand upon him. 
The slightest touch caused him to spring up in terror, 
while he did not seem to comprehend anything that was 
said to him. He was too far out in the bog! He only 
saw the sights and heard the sounds of the dreadful 
slough of Sin by which he had been entrapped and fas- 
tened, and into whose depths he was slowly disappear- — 
ing from human view. 

With snatches of ribald songs, scraps of jokes, partly 
uttered oaths, and a horrible laugh that as quickly died 
away into moans and whines, he passed through the last 
three hours of his life; when suddenly starting up from 
his bed he shrieked at the top of his voice so as to be 
heard all over the house and even on the street: 

“Take them off me! Don’t you see they are killing 


THE MAN IN A BOG. 139 


me! Murder Murder! Murder!” And fell back upon 
his pillow in convulsions. 

In ten minutes more he was dead. 

The bog had done its work! 


XVI. 
A LIFETIME MISTAKE. 


LIFETIME mistake is one, as the words them- ; 


selves indicate, which affects and pursues the chief 
actor up to the very door of his tomb. It is some mental 
or moral blunder which stamps its dark, sad impress of 


influence and consequence upon every year of the earth-. 


ly life, escorts the individual up to the cemetery, and in 
many instances resumes the companionship on the other 
side of the grave. Of course there are sighs heaved, 
tears shed, and much suffering endured by the victim 
all along the weary months and years; but such things 
do not atone for the misdeed or mistake, and also fail as 
a deliverance from the peculiar affliction brought into 
the life by one’s own hasty or deliberate choice or act. 

The patient acceptance of the sorrow may bring about 
a weanedness from the world, and a corresponding de- 
velopment of the Christian character, but the peculiar 
trial remains. The fact that it was brought upon us 
by our own act adds to the bitterness of the life calamity. 

Among these grave mistakes none seems to be more 
common than that of unwise marriages. The rushing 


mills of the divorce courts declare plainly in their own 
140 


A LIFETIME MISTAKE. 141 


way how little thought and judgment were exercised by 
a great multitude of people in entering upon matri- 
mony; while the unmistakable unhappiness and misery 
in countless households where the law is not resorted to 
for relief show as conclusively that the old adage is as 
true to-day as ever, where individuals are said to “marry 
in haste and repent at leisure.” 

The birds and animals, with all their inferiority, do 
not make the blunders of men and women when it comes 
to consorting; and even on their entrance into Noah’s 
Ark, did so in pairs of a similar kind that indicated a 
certain level-headedness and wisdom which human be- 
ings might do well to imitate. What astonishment and 
laughter would have been occasioned if the lion had 
gone in with a cow, a tiger with a lamb, a goat with a 
monkey, and a giraffe with a rabbit! 

But they did not, and we are compelled to look at the 
Human Race instead, to see the most absurd, incongru- 
ous and ill-assorted life companionships that the Fancy 
and Imagination could create in their wildest moments. 
The physical contrasts in the long with the short, and 
the fat with the lean is the smallest part of these marital 
infelicities. For graver even than Ugliness wedded to 
Beauty, we behold Refinement joined to Coarseness; 
Intellect to Ignorance; Character to Weakness; Good- 
ness to Meanness; and Piety to Sin! Well might we 


142 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, xs 


say what on earth were people thinking of when they — 
paid a preacher to join a portion of Heaven to a section 
of Hell, and then ask God in a concluding prayer to 
bless such a union. 

In one of our large Southern cities lived a young 
man whom we shall call Alford. He was a member of 
the Methodist Church, had been clearly converted, was 
an active worker, and recognized by all as a spiritual 
man. He had been appointed steward and trustee, made 
a Sunday school teacher and finally promoted to the 
superintendency. Wherever he was placed he gave per- 
fect satisfaction to the pastor and congregation. 

The profession followed by Alford for a livelihood 
was that of the law. In it he had already distinguished 
himself as a fluent speaker, cogent reasoner and success- 
ful practitioner. He was conceded on all sides to be a 
steadily rising man, and making a fine income was evi- © 
dently on his way to fortune as well as fame. 

The Cireuit Court in which he did much of his prac- 
tice was composed of a number of towns in the State 

besides the city in which he lived. Twice a year he 
"made flying trips to these various communities, accord- 
ing to his clients and briefs. In one of these localities, a 
mere village, he met his fate. 

The destiny in this case was a young girl of seventeen 
or eighteen, with a pretty, doll-baby kind of a face, and 


A LIFETIME MISTAKE. 143 


a pair of penciled eyebrows, some flaxen hair on top of 
an empty skull, which in turn roofed over a shallow, 
hollow heart. The girl was good-looking but had neither 
sense nor religion. 

This combination of course is quite unfortunate for 
a woman, and equally deplorable for the man who mar- 
ries her; for in the course of time the physical loveliness 
is certain to depart, and then, if there is neither brains 
nor piety to fall back on, the absence at the same time 
of three such desirable things as comeliness, character 
and intellect makes a most startling and distressing 
vacuity. 

This is the reason that some men feel so completely 
undone and bankrupt in the home life. In their delu- 
sion they fancied they had captured all three of the 
above-named qualities, when they had simply married 
a French doll, or one of those highly dressed but most 
profoundly uninteresting figures we see posing in a 
milliner’s or dressmaker’s window. The infatuated man 
mistook pertness for intellect, and innocence, or, rather 
ignorance of the world, for character and spirituality. 
By and by, when the beauty of face departed, they 
looked for the other attributes, and lo! they were not, 
for they had never been! 

At this interesting juncture men as a rule feel that 


_ they have been very badly treated, when the fact is that 


144 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


they are themselves to blame. They swallowed the bait 7 


without stopping to examine the hook and pole, and 


especially the individual on the bank who was angling — 


for a husband. 

Of course there is another side to all this, where a 
good woman has dropped her line in the stream and 
instead of catching a fish landed an alligator, which 
proceeded to eat her up. 

But in the case we are now considering all could see 
that the wrong and injury came from the woman to the 
man. The girl was nothing but a little social butterfly. 
And yet a gifted, sensible man married her! <A lawyer 
who could unravel criminal mysteries, and read charac- 
ter in the prisoner’s dock and jury box at a glance, was 
completely taken in by a simpering, silly miss not 
out of her teens. He carried to his handsome home 
in the city, to be its queen and mistress, and to be his 
life-long companion and the mother of his children, 
something that under a faithful analysis resolved itself 
into a lawn dress with some pink ribbons, out of which 
peeped a small skull that was thatched with some fluffy 
blonde hair on the outside and furnished with almost 
next to nothing in the way of brains on the inside. 

At first the man was amused with and interested in 
the frilled and furbelowed addition to his house; but 
in the course of a few weeks he had been rewarded with 


A LIFETIME MISTAKE. 145 


so many handfuls of empty air in return for clutches 
and grasps he had made upon his wife for something 
solid and substantial that a strangely anxious, troubled 
look began to gather in his eyes and settle in deep lines 
upon his face. 

At her very entrance upon city life, this only child, 
petted and spoiled by her family, demanded to be taken 
everywhere to see the sights. She had been raised in a 
country town, had never beheld a great metropolis, and 
now wanted a general introduction to all its stars and 
lions, and immediate initiation into every one of its 
amusements. 

The husband firmly remonstrated against going to 
the theater and opera, telling his wife that he was not 
only a member of the church but an official as well; that 
his attendance upon such places would not only be a vio- 
lation of ecclesiastical law, but a reproach on Chris- 
tianity. 

Her reply was that he had been in the world and was 
surfeited ; while she had never been anywhere nor seen 
anything that was worth talking about. She added that 
men were down town all day and saw much to interest, 
divert and please, while women had to be at home all 
the time, and knew nothing of what was going on in the 
world. As she had heard a number of her female 


friends say this she repeated it with great assurance, 


146 . REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


and with an appearance of being strikingly original. 
She wound up by saying that she just could not stand it 
to be cooped up that way; that it would have been bet- 
ter for her to have stayed at home with papa and mam- 
ma, and never married at all, ete., ete., ete. 

This style of acting, kept up a few days, with the 
usual accompaniment of tears, coolness, and positive 
sulks, won the day at last; and so, starting out with 
coneerts and socials, Alford, the young lawyer, was after 
a while beheld with his wife at the opera and theater, 
then on the ball-room floor, and finally at every ee of 
worldly entertainment. 

The light soon left the man’s face; he gave up his 
position as Sunday school superintendent, resigned 
from the Board of Stewards, became irregular in his 
attendance upon church, and at last ceased to come alto- 
gether. 

Things went on this way for several years, when the 
writer of this sketch was appointed pastor of the charge 
where Alford and his wife held their membership. He 
saw with pain the unconverted state of the woman, and 
the backslidden condition of the man, but planned a 
protracted meeting and secured their promise to attend. 

The lawyer broke his word and came only two or 
three times. The wife attended regularly, got under 


terrible conviction, and one night was brightly con- 


Pe 
Ly 


A LIFETIME MISTAKE. 147 


verted. Her husband happened to be present that even- 
ing, and we saw her with her face all aglow, rush to 
him, throw her arms about his form, and ery out, “Oh, 
Henry, I have got salvation! Come and get it, my hus- 
band! Don’t you want it, Henry ?” 

Should we live to be a thousand years old we will 
never forget the cold, stony look he turned upon her. 
Tt was as though she had embraced the Sphinx! In 
the midst of all her joy she was staggered by the coun- 
tenance he turned upon her. Her gladness changed 
into a whimper, and she placed her hand appealingly 
upon his shoulder; but the man never gave a sign that 
he recognized her presence or entreaty, while a dark, 
hard expression on the set face made it appear as if it 
was constructed out of iron. 

Interpreted partially the look meant this, ‘““Who are 
you to be talking to me in this manner? What right 
have you to speak to me about salvation, when it was 
your influence and life that led me from duty and from 
God!” 

The silliness, shallowness and ignorance of the woman 
were to be seen even in this demonstrative rush upon 
her husband. Here she was expecting to undo in a mo- 
ment an evil work which had cost her years to accom- 
plish. She had stolen from the man his Christian faith, 


hope and joy, by a course of systematic opposition as 


148 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


well as temptation, and yet expected to restore it all in © 


# moment with a wave of the hand and a chuck under — 


the chin. 

She had led her husband astray; could she not bring 
kim back? Very likely this question arose in her mind, 
and we do not doubt that the same query has been asked 
by countless aching hearts before and since. 

The answer is beheld all around us in hopelessly 
ruined lives! 


It seems that we are powerless to recover those 


whom we personally led astray. There are exceptions, — 


but the rule is the other way, as presented in this sketch. 
The fearful fact so constantly revealed in life is, that 
one can drag another from the light into darkness, and 
afterwards himself get back into light, but the one 
pulled down as a rule remains pulled down. Even when 
they are restored it will be, and must be, by another 
hand than that which drew them from God into sin. 
The reason for this must be evident to any spiritual 
thinker; while the fact itself brings to the breast of 
the repenting wrongdoer the keenest regret and suffer- 
ing. 

Alford and his wife are still living, although nearly 
twenty years have passed by since the scene described 
in the protracted meeting. The woman is what is called 


an active worker in the church, and has a little spiritual 


vr 


A LIFETIME MISTAKE. 149 


life; but she bears upon her face a settled melancholy 
that is evident to the most careless observer. 

Alford became a prominent man, made money, but 
has evidently lost his soul. It is already lost according 
to the Bible. He is a ward politician, is immersed in 
the cares and business of this world, and living without 
hope and without God in the world. Foulmouthed, 
profane, scented with tobacco and bloated with beer, it 
would be impossible to recognize in the hard-featured 
moral wreck the handsome, pure-faced, devoted young 
Christian whom a number of older citizens still remem- 
ber, and recall with deepest sorrow of heart, because, in 
truth, he is no more. 

Poor fellow! There are two passages of Scripture 
that we imagine he can never hear without a pang. One 
was spoken in the Garden of Eden when the blight and 
sorrow of sin had fallen, and God was locating the 
trouble. To the question, Why have you done this? the 
answer was reluctantly but. truthfully given in the 
words: “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me.” 

The other passage is in the Gospel. It represents a 
principle as well as describes a fact. It reads thus: 

“The hand that betrayeth me is with me on the table.” 


XVII. 
THE FACE IN THE CEILING. 


HERE are many strange things taking place all 
around us, that are as remarkable as any creation — 

of Fancy or labored work of fiction. There are happen- 
ings at times in human lives which so encroach upon — 
the supernatural as to defy all explanations of human 
reason. If narrated by persons of excitable and nervous 
temperament, we might obtain some light on the pecu- 
liar transactions, but told by persons of acknowledged 
level heads, steady nerves and unquestionable character, — 
the matter reaches a point of mystery beyond all com- — 
prehension. 
Once in a meeting led by the writer he had a morning — 
audience of fully one thousand people, while a half — 
dozen preachers and laymen of the community sat in ~ 
chairs upon the platform just behind the speaker. 
At the conclusion of the sermon in one of these day _ 4 
services, we left the stand to talk and work with the . 
seekers at the altar. As we did so a lady literally stag- _ 
gered toward us and, clutching our arm with a face as — 


white as death, and turning a pair of horror-stricken 
150, 


THE FACE IN THE CEILING. 151 


eyes on one of the persons sitting on the platform, she 
fairly gasped: 

“Oh, my God, Brother C., God has revealed yonder 
man to me! Oh, his face! It is all—all—oh, hor- 
ror! horror!—” And the woman, trembling all over 
and unable to speak another word, covered her face and 
looked as if she would fall to the ground. 

We said in reply, “My sister, what on earth is the 
matter with you?” 

She lifted her face and, casting another look of 
consternation, amazement and loathing upon a certain 
man on the platform, said: 

“Must I tell you what I see? Must I tell you about 
his face ?” 

And again the expression of fear and disgust sprang 
up into her eyes and voice, while she looked like she 
would die with mental agony. 

Seeing that her agitation was attracting attention, we 
replied: 

“No. Say nothing and calm yourself. God can man- 
age the man who so troubles you.” 

She obeyed tremblingly, but since then we have won- 
dered whether we did right in checking her. As Peter 
exposed one character and Paul another enemy of the 
Gospel, how do we know but that the Spirit of God 


152 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


intended confusion, conviction and salvation from th 
incident ? 

All this is but an introduction to a curious cireum-— 
stance which took place five or six years ago in one of 
the Southern States. The main party concerned was a 
minister of the Gospel in the Presbyterian Church. For 
years he had been an active, zealous servant of God, — 
when the great temptation of his life arose, began its — 
assault, siege and sapping work. 

While no criminality stained his soul, yet an infat- 
uation had set in, drawing his thoughts and affections 
in forbidden directions, until a frightful moral peril, 
increasing daily in danger, threatened his character and 
salvation. 

The mutual weakness of the two began to be observed, 
and some, with watch and almanac in hand, placed 
themselves, so to speak, to note the expected crash and 


downfall. 


a ee 


At this critical time the preacher, now almost van- 
quished, retired one night to his room. He was sitting 
in a chair near a center table, upon which rested a 
lighted lamp, when, happening to look toward the fire- 
place, he beheld to his unutterable horror, an agonized 
human face just over the mantel and thrust partly out 
from the wall! It was the countenance of the man | 


whom he was on the verge of wronging in the darkest 


THE FACE IN THE CEILING. 153 


and most dishonorable manner. The face was con- 
vulsed; the eyes were turned upon him with such fury 
and hate that they looked as if they would burst from 
the head ; the veins were swollen and the whole appear- 
ance that of a man longing to murder the being upon 
whom he was gazing. 

The spectacle was so horrifying to the guilty con- 
science that the convicted man drew a large knife from 
his pocket and drove the blade into his breast just over 
the heart. As he did so he fell upon the floor, face up- 
permost, with the blood gushing from the wound, while 
the knife handle quivered and shook with the beating 
of the heart just beneath. 

Momentarily expecting death, the unhappy preacher 
was afraid to look toward the mantel lest he should 
see again the dreadful apparition there, but, in a kind of 
mingled despair and supplication, cast his eyes upward, 
and to his amazement beheld a face, holy, pitiful and 
yet aggrieved, looking down upon him from the ceiling. 

The lamp from the table threw a ring of light on the 
wall above, and right in this circle, which seemed like 
a halo, appeared this loving, melancholy, rebuking coun- 
tenance. There was a peculiar glory resting upon it, 
and he felt in his inmost soul that it was Christ who 
was casting upon him that sorrowful, reproachful gaze. 


The face, while showing compassion, yet had also a 


154 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


commanding, protesting expression. Translated into 
language it would have read, “Do thyself no harm.” 

At this moment the wounded man lost consciousness, 
and the next morning was found by the members of the — 
household lying on the floor and weltering in blood | 
which trickled slowly from the wound, while the knife ~ 
thrust up to the haft in the breast was still giving that — 
quivering, oscillating movement in answer to the throb 7 
of the miserable heart close by. 

The stab was not a fatal one, and in the course of a — 
few days the subject of this sketch was out again, but — 
bearing a deeper wound on his soul than the blade had _ 
given his body. 4 ; 

Up to this time he had been a great ridiculer and op- a 
poser of holiness, insisting that no man could live with- 4 
out sin in this world. But there was something in the — 
two faces that looked upon him that night which made 
him wish to leave all sin forever. He conceived an un- 
utterable horror of going to a world where agonized 
spirits glare on each other, and came into as great a 
longing for a country where the King’s face, in its love, _ 
purity and truth, is the light and glory of the land. 4 
The fight against’ sanctification and sanctified people ‘ 
was all taken out of him, and he became the most 4g 
thoughtful and melancholy of men. ’ 


THE FACE IN THE CEILING. 155 


_ At this time the papers announced the holding of a 
holiness convention in a large city not far from where 
the preacher lived. Without declaring his intention to 
any one, he made his arrangements to attend, determin- 
ing, if there was truth in the doctrine and experience, 
he would find it out, and get rid of a “body of sin and 
death’ which seemed to be located in his spirit some- 
where, and that kept him bowed down as with a load 
almost continually. He had before this received pardon 
for his sins of thought and desire and for his attempted 
suicide. It was not forgiveness he wanted now, but de- 
liverance, freedom, purity, holiness! 

So he came to the city, arriving on the third night of 
the meeting. As he took his seat in the Tabernacle, he 
heard the people speaking in whispers around him of 
the power that had already come down. He found aris- 
ing in him a strange interest in and desire to see the 
evangelist who was conducting the services. 

The building began to fill up rapidly, while the hands 
of the clock were approaching the minute when worship 
would begin. Preachers and laymen came in and took 
seats upon the platform, while whispering people would 
say, “There he is,” “No, that is not the man,” etc., ete. 

At last, just as the hands pointed to half-past seven, 
a man walked upon the platform from a side door, and 
knelt for several minutes by a chair, with his head 


156 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


bowed low. For some reason the visiting preacher fe! t 
his eyes riveted on the kneeling figure. He could not 
account for it, but his interest was almost a breathless 
one in a person whose face he had not yet seen. He felt — 
without being told that the man praying was the evan- 
gelist, and there was a strange thrill upon him that this" . 
man was to affect his life in some powerful way. . 

Suddenly the evangelist arose and took his seat with © 
his face toward the congregation and fronting in a ; 
straight line with the visitor. To the preacher’s un- 
speakable amazement he saw shining on the countenance 
of the evangelist the same peculiar light and glory he 
had beheld on the face which had gazed upon him from 
the ceiling! 


His emotion was so great that he could scarcely con- 


: 
: 


trol himself, and but for the opening volume of song — 
would have doubtless cried out. Little by little, — 
Lowever, the strange fact translated itself to his mind 


after this manner: 

“God is in all this. There is His servant and he will 
bring me a message. The light and strange glory I 
see upon him is the Lord’s endorsement and introduc- 
tion of His messenger, and is a bidding to me to listen, 
believe and receive. By the grace of God I will.” 

And he did. As the sermon proceeded and the truth 
was unfolded, he saw the human need and the divine 


4 
S. 
hh aes 


THE FACE IN THE CEILING. 157 


supply, the plague and the remedy of sin. He saw the 
possibility of obtaining a pure heart filled with perfect 
love, not as a development, but as an instantaneous work 
of grace wrought in the consecrated and believing soul. 

At the conclusion of the sermon, he came all broken to 
the altar, and went again and again, until, on the fourth 
night of his public seeking, he found the pearl of great 
price, full salvation from all sin. 

This was six years ago; and it was only last summer 
that we met him and had his story from his own lips. 
And, judging from the light in his face, the gladness 
in his eyes and voice, and the unmistakable peace in 
his soul, he was undergoing no regret whatever, that he 
had sought with all his heart, and given up all that he 
was and possessed, and had received in exchange the 


blessing of a restful, holy heart. 


XVIII. 
A LONG-TIME SUFFERER. 


WO remarkable things about human life are bound 
to impress the observer in the course of a very 
short time. One is the compensating feature of the di- 
vine providence. That is when people are seen to be 
maimed, afflicted or poverty stricken, a second study of 
the case reveals them in the possession of some talent, 
gift, beauty of person or possession of wealth which 
shows that if for some reasons they are to be pitied, 
there are still other circumstances in the ease that call 
for admiration and congratulation. The invalid is dis- 
covered to be an author or gifted musician. The hunch- 
back has a fortune, ete., ete. 

On the other hand, in the study of the great human 
procession before us, we find what might be called the 
drawbacks and discounts of life. That is, we find people 
of fortune, station, wisdom, wit, beauty and fame fairly 
borne down and crushed with some kind of malady, 
affliction, sorrow, trial or physical suffering that dashes 
with bitterness the whole cup of life. 

Miss Edgeworth, in one of her works, tells of a wo- 


man of fashion and an envied ruler in high circles who 
158 


A LONG-TIME SUFFERER. 159 


would have to retire from her receptions into a private 
room to hide the paroxysms of pain occasioned by a can- 
cer on the breast. One of our leading generals, famous 
around the world, suffered excruciating anguish for 
years and finally died from the effects of a fearful dis- 
ease of the tongue and throat. Two of the reigning 
monarchs of Europe to-day are martyrs to physical pain 
that amounts to torture. 

The Bible recognizes this state of things without com- 
ment, in the quiet statement that Naaman, the captain 
of the hosts of the King of Syria, was a great man with 
his master, but he was a leper! 

A New-Yorker, standing on Fifth avenue one night, 
pointed out to a friend a number of elegant brown-stone 
mansions, and stated in connection with each one some 
ghastly, grizzly, sorrowful fact of family history that 
was bound to make the inmates of those palaces heave as 
heavy sighs and weep as bitter tears as are heard and 
seen in the abodes of poverty in the slums of the same 
city. There seems to be some kind of presiding justice, 
some equalizing agency in life, which divides out bless- 
ings and afflictions in the human race, preventing pros- 
perity from running mad in this place, and adversity 
from sinking in despair over yonder. So a weight is 
needed for one man, and a wing must be attached to 


another, and an anchor fastened to still another. 


160 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, 


Sometimes the life seems to be all gaiety; but we have 


only to wait to see that the burdens finally come, and 
those happenings to heart, mind, soul and body take 
place which give the grave, thoughtful lines to the face, 
the increasing slowness to speak, the growing pity and 
charity to men, the weanedness from this earth, and, in 
a word, that better condition for ertrance upon a world 
and life where destiny is fixed, character and goodness 
constitute +the rank, and the King is Immutable! 
Omnipotent! Eternal! and above all, Holy! 

Tn one of our Southern towns dwelt a woman who was 
the occasion of envy to many hundreds of hearts. She 
was beautiful, to begin with, was educated and accom- 
plished, possessed wealth, moved in what is called the 
best social circles, married well, had a lovely family of 
three sons and a daughter, and owned one of the hand- 


somest homes in the town where she lived. 


This lady was a Methodist, but scarcely ever attended — 


church. The temple of worship was only two blocks 
from the house, and its great bell summoning its congre- 
gation could be heard even through the thick walls and 
closed doors of the family mansion. She in after years 
confessed that the sound disturbed her. She said it had 
an accent of invitation and entreaty, and seemed to say, 
with its solemn swing and deep-toned note, “Come! 


Come! Come!” 


A LONG-TIME SUFFERER. - 161 


But why go? According to earthly ight and wisdom 
she did not need to go. Did she not possess everything 
dear to a woman’s heart? Were not her husband and 
children devoted to her? Were they not all well? Did 
she not have friends and money in abundance? What 
need to go? Churches doubtless were very good for the 
disappointed, afflicted and heartbroken of earth, but she 
had suffered no bereavement, lost no fortune or friends; 
what need, then, for her to attend? Her household 
circle was unbroken, and she had never known what it 
was to have a serious spell of sickness. No, the bell 
might ring on, but she was not going! She had all she 
wanted right around her. 

It would be impossible to tell how many people who 
passed down that street, and, glancing over the lawn and 
flower yard at the stately dwelling, surrounded by large 
shade trees, felt that they would gladly exchange places 
with such an obviously blessed and favored woman. 

It would not require much spirtual wisdom for a per- 
son to see that the things in this hfe which absorb our 
attention, engross our affection and take up our time are 
the rivals of God and the enemies of our soul. In the 
faithful dealing and providence of the Almighty, false 
deities are struck at and idols have to go. Men would 


be spared more suffering in this world if they did not 


162 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, 


bow down in false worship and make divinities of flesh, 
mud and metal. 

In the fullness of time the clouds gathered, the winds — 
arose, and the cyclone fell. The husband, a son and | 
daughter died; a second boy wandered from home and 
was heard of no more, and the third became a drunk- — 
ard. Then the fortune took wings and vanished, the — 
home went under the auctioneer’s hammer, and the sor- 
rowing woman took refuge in an humble cottage near — 
by. For years her health had been going down, and now 4 
she became a hopeless invalid. 

Her disease was a peculiar form of rheumatism, 
which horribly misshaped her limbs, drew her wrists 4 
awry, and twisted her fingers until they looked uncanny 
and not human like. For the first few years she was a 
able to do a little crochet work, but as the cramping and — 
bending of the hands went on, even this simple task 
- became impossible, and, all curved in body and with two 
bunches of fingers held before her, all pointing in differ- 
ent directions, she sat in an invalid chair day after day, 
month after month, and year after year with nothing to 
do but to think and suffer, and suffer and think. 4 

When we first saw her, through. the request of her ; 
pastor, she had been in this condition seventeen years. ; 
She had been such a sufferer that all of her splendid 
beauty was gone; while the shock we realized on behold- 


A LONG-TIME SUFFERER. 163 


ing the doubled-up form and the glazed-looking, talon- 
like fingers is remembered powerfully to this day. 

The deeply atfilicted woman lived seven years after 
that before Death relieved her from her sufferings. She 
told the writer, on the visit just mentioned, that she 
never knew a single instant when she was free from 
pain. To this martyrdom of seventeen years was added, 
as we have said, seven more, so that she was in the fur- 
nace of physical affliction a quarter of a century lack- 
ing just twelve months. 

It is with deep gratification we record the fact 
that when the great troubles of the woman’s life came 
rolling in upon her Like the billows of an ocean, she 
turned to God. Instead of engulfing, these waves under 
the blessing of heaven, tossed her soul to the feet of 
Christ. Widowed, childless, beggared, homeless, lonely, 
wrecked in health and all but friendless, she called on 
God, was heard in that she feared, and was delivered - 
and carried from that time like a lamb in the bosom of 
the divine Shepherd. 

At the time we first beheld her she had been a saint 
for years. The invalid chair had become a throne, she 
was the recognized daughter of the King of Heaven, a 
princess of Royal birth, and exercised a holy rulership 
which all felt the instant they entered her presence. 


From the wreck of the physical comeliness came up a 


164 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


moral and spiritual loveliness which simply defied de- 
scription. It was the beauty of holiness. It was a 
benediction to the eye and soul to look upon her rest- 
ful, shining countenance. 

From the hour she obtained Full Salvation, she rever 
was heard to murmur or utter a complaint of any kind. 
Even when she said she was never without pain she 
spoke so sweetly and quietly that one could scarcely 
realize the truth of her statement, until it was confirmed 
by her physician. 

People from all over town came to her for advice, 
sympathy and comfort in trouble. She never failed to 
give what was needed, and hundreds went away from the 
throne-room of this princess of grace renewed, refilled, 
refired and in some way better prepared for the suffer- 
ings, toils and battles-of life. They came to the physi- 
cally weak and she, all powerful through the Lord whom 
she loved and served, helped them to spiritual life and 
strength. 

The writer had been asked to call on her and pray 
with her; but as we entered the room and looked upon 
her face, we saw that, in spite of the bent and emaciated 
body, one of Heaven’s Queens was before us. In- 
stead of praying for her, we felt strongly inclined to 
bow down at once and beg her to pray for us. We went 


~ 


ho” 


A LONG-TIME SUFFERER. 165 


there to do her good, but God is our witness that she 
blessed us far more than we helped her. 

After a long and victorious reign of twenty years, 
subsequent to her becoming a spiritual queen and as- 
cending the throne, she left the invalid chair, got into 
a chariot of fire, and went up to her Father’s Heavenly 
Kingdom. The poor afflicted body was so twisted and 
bent that it could not be placed in a coffin, so they boxed 
up with plank the wooden seat, with its silent, pulseless 
occupant, and buried her thus in the cemetery. 

There the body is to-day sitting upright and waiting 
for the coming and voice of the Son of God, who will 
summon her to arise and appear in resurrection glory 
and perfection, to suffer and die no more forever. The 
spirit of the released martyr has been in heaven now 
fully twenty years. We doubt not that face to face she 
has long ago thanked the King who saw fit to slay the 
body in order to save the soul, who changed her invalid 
chair to a throne, and who made her afflictions work 


out for her a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 


glory. 


XIX. 
THE BULGER FAMILY. 


HE household circle that bore the name of Bul- 
ger consisted of the father, mother and five sons. 


As a rule they had but little to do with their neigh- — 


bors, were counted unsocial, and seemed glad to be let 
alone. 

Left to and centered in themselves one might have 
supposed that books, music and bright conversation 
would explain their independent attitude, and account 
for the flight of the hours which were spent in each 
other’s presence. But the Bulger family had no lit- 
erary tastes, hardly read anything, owned no musical 
instruments and spoke but rarely and briefly to one 
another. 

All had stolid looking faces, and would sit for half 
an hour at a time around the fireside without saying 
a word while twirling their thumbs and solemnly bat- 
ting their eyes. They also had a strange way of gazing 
fixedly at people, as if they were looking upon va- 
cancy. It seemed as if they were trying to bore into and 


read the very inmost heart of the party before them, 
166 


THE BULGER FAMILY. 167 


when in reality they were doing nothing of the kind. 
It was just a cow-like gaze they possessed. 

Until one knew the family and its idiosyncrasies 
better it was quite uncomfortable to feel seven pairs 
of eyes all turned solemnly on the visitor, while the 
twirling thumbs seemed to be turning the victim over 
and over in exhaustive investigation, and the eyelids 
batted out the few moments left him to live in the 
world. Sometimes we have seen this household In- 
quisition keep up its oppressive silence, eye-batting 
and thumb-twisting for a full hour; the only change 
being some slight alteration of position in crossing, 
uncrossing or recrossing the limbs. 

In the beginning of the acquaintance with the Bul- 
gers, one was impressed with the necessity of breaking 
into this dreadful stillness and eye inquiry by some kind - 
of remark. One felt like protesting and proving in 
some way that he was not as bad as the Bulgers seemed 
to think. Or humanity itself demanded that the 
Bulger mind should be relieved and diverted by the 
utterance of something pleasant, edifying, or even hu- 
morous. But it was all alike lost on the Bulgers. 
They either would not or could not be entertained; 
so that every verbal sally was met with the chilling 
gaze, fired at steadily with the batting eyelid, and 
literally rolled out of sight by the twirling thumbs. 


168 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


On some of these occasions one of the famil 
been known to give a little grunt; or the corner of 
mouth would twitch a moment; but as if to make up 
for such unbending, an increased gravity would settle 
in the manner and a deeper stolidity than ever appear ; 
in the face; so that the unfortunate speaker would be — 
quite confused and overcome not to say frozen by this — 
sudden running up against and discovery of the North — 
Pole. 

The old father was the most restless of the seven, if — 
such a charge could be made upon any of them. Once — 
in awhile he would heave a sigh, turn in his seat, throw 
his arm over the back of his chair and gaze through his — 
spectacles out of the window, and bat and blink as sol- 
emnly and wisely as though he was seated on the high- _ 
est judicial bench, and settling the merits of the pro- 
foundest legal case in the country. So it seemed, for 
really his mind at times was as blank as his eyes looked. 
Some said he was really gazing at something, but that 
it was an inner history; and this contemplation brought 
the sigh, and the restless movement in the chair. 

The mother in earlier years had been disposed to be p 
talkative, and break up in a measure the family silence. b 
But six household Gibraltars pounded her wavelets of . 
attempted conversation to pieces, and so she had sub- 
sided into a corner, where she would knit for hours 


THE BULGER FAMILY. 169 


without a word, only stealing an occasional glance at 
her husband and sons. There was, however, this dif- 
ference between them; she thought, while the others 
just looked like they were thinking; they simply 
batted ! 

The oldest son was the first to die, and almost imme- 
diately a whisper crept around about a couple of dark 
deeds attributable to him. This caused a more 
systematic shunning of the Bulgers, but they closed up 
ranks without a word and went on as soldiers do when 
comrades fall in battle. 

In the course of a few years every son save Horace, 
the youngest, was in the cemetery, and it was curious 
that with each succeeding death a new whisper would 
arise and float about relative to some dark and criminal 
deed that had been committed by the dead man. So 
there were rumors of a deserted wife, a forged note and 
other unenviable transactions. If the Bulgers heard 
these reports they gave no sign, but simply closed up 
ranks each time, and stared with increasing stolidity 
at the fire. 

They were reduced to three in number when sud- 
denly the old man took to his bed, gathered up his feet, 
turned his face to the wall, stared it out of countenance, 
batted his eyes a number of times without saying a 


word, and was gone. 


170 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


At this time the youngest and now only surviving © 
son came to the front. He obtained a fine position in , 
a large store and by steady devotion to business got to 
be looked on as one of the best young men of the — 
town. He had the same peculiar grave countenance 
and silent manners of his departed father and brothers, © 
but unlike them he seemed to be energetic and indus- 
trious and so won a certain public regard. In addition 
to his business punctuality he was courteous in his 
quiet way to all, careful in his dress, and never seen in 
a theatre, circus, billiard room or saloon. 

After his mother left him to live with a favorite ; 
niece in a distant town, Horace Bulger rented a room % 
over the store where he clerked, and when business 
hours were over could almost invariably be found in : 
this apartment. ‘ 

So his stock steadily rose in value in the social and 
commercial world, as both classes of people counted him 
a model young man, in every respect. : 

Several years passed and Horace became identified 
with one of the churches, was made an official member, 
and also elected librarian of the Sunday school. It 
was charming to see him in his black suit and immacu- 
late linen, the pink of propriety, a model of gravity, 
while his books were as well kept as his Sabbath gar- 
ments. He formed the text of many a mother’s sermon 


THE BULGER FAMILY. ay Gi! 


or exhortation te her wandering boys, ““Why don’t you 
do like Horace Bulger?’ “If I could see you sober 
and steady like Horace Bulger I could die in peace,” 
ete... etic. 

Perhaps of all classes of people, young Bulger was 
least popular with the wild boys and youths in town 
because they had been so often tongue-thrashed over 
the shoulders of his consistent and moral life. 

One day a young man of another church was in the 
store being waited on by Horace. As the clerk was 
bundling up an article for his customer, he remarked 
in regard to some occurrence : 

“That is as hard to believe as that I am a drinking 
man.” 

To this the purchaser said nothing, whereupon Bul- 
ger again asserted: “That is as hard to credit as a re- 
port would be that I am a drinking man.” 

And still there was a painful silence. 

Bulger seemed strangely annoyed at the failure of 
the young man to make any response, and repeated the 
third time the same speech, and ended it with the ques- 
tion : 

“Don’t you think so?” 

And the quiet but firm-faced man before him re- 
plied: 

“Tf you insist on my speaking the truth, I would say 


172 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


that I think you are the hardest drinker in the city 
The effect of this blunt and honest speech on Bulger _ 
was amazing. He turned pale as death, and said with — 
a choking voice: 
“What have you seen in me that makes you — 
so?” 
And the customer replied: = or months I have ob- | 
served the unmistakable se " 


hie and asked: 

“Do you think any one else has noticed it?” 

“T believe,” returned his rebuker, with a sorrowful 
and solemn face, “that your employer begins to suspect — 
you.” “2 

The next. moment the guilty man “went to pieces? 
as they say in criminal court language, and made the 
ghastly confession to the man standing before him that — | 
there was not a night that he did not empty four to six a 
bottles of strong liquor, and was always under alcoholic 4 
influence in the day. 

Pursuing his confession he said, in great agitation: — 

“T cannot help myself. My brothers were all secret 
drinkers, and so was my father before us. He himself 
inherited the same appetite from his father; so it came 
to my brothers and myself with a double power. It has 
got me ! Tam in chains, and can’t break away, and 


THE BULGER FAMILY. lites 


don’t want to. I was in hopes that I could drink in 
secret, keep up in public and attend to my work. But 
TI see I cannot. I feel now that I am a doomed man!” 

The friend before him offered counsel, encouragement 
and hope through Christ, but his words evidently fell 
on a dull and dead ear. 

Bulger was never the same person after this. He be- 
came reckless and allowed his true character to be seen 
by the public. In less than three years he drank him- 
self into a drunkard’s grave. 

His body lies in the cemetery in the same row with 
his father and four brothers, who in spite of their per- 
sistent silence became well known to men. 

Evidently there must be another speech or language 
than that of the tongue by which we declare ourselves, 
and get to be accurately measured and properly branded 
at the hands of our fellow men. 

* * * 

Not long after these occurrences two gentlemen were 
conversing about the strangeness of the circumstance, 
when one said to the other: 

“To you know the lesson we learn from the ostrich ?” 

“I suppose that little heads and big plumes go to- 
gether.” 


“No, sir; try again.” 


174 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


“Well, then, the smallest of heads may go with the 
largest of bodies.” 7 
“No. Your answers are good; but you have not 7 
given the right one yet.” | 

“Then I give up.” 

“T am surprised at that, for the lesson I refer to is 
the one that should be the first to suggest itself. I 
mean the curious habit of the bird when pursued, of _ 
thrusting its little silly head in the sand and thinking 3 
its huge body is hidden. Here was Horace Bulger a 
confirmed drunkard and positively comfortable with 
the thought that not a soul knew it. He forgot that a 
man’s actual life is bigger than what he says, and that 
character is as evident as outward conduct. He 
also failed to recognize that a small town is the shal- 
lowest of sand in which to hide the real man.” 

There was a few moments of silence when the speaker 
added: 

“There are many who are trying to do the same thing 
to-day. They talk, write, gesticulate and vociferate 
one thing and are really another. Meantime they are 
under the marvelous delusion that everybody is ignorant 
concerning their true selves, when the fact is that 
the big body of the real man is perfectly apparent to 
the thoughtful, while it is only the shallow head of the 
would-be deceiver that is under the sand.” 


THE BULGER FAMILY. 175 


There followed a moment of reflection, and the party 
addressed remarked, with a sigh: 

“The ostrich family is a large one!” 

“Yes,” replied the other, “and quite a number of its 
members have moved from Africa to America.” 


XX. 


A HUMAN CYCLONE. 


HE famous Fourth of July was being celebrated 

in a southern town after the usual order of dis- 
order, made up of shouting and yelling, brass-band — 
playing, soldier parading, speechifying, firecrackers 
by day and skyrockets by night, with cannon-shooting © 
at all hours. 4 
Among the patriotic and tireless young men who — 
managed the ten-pounder on a neighboring bluff, waking 
up the echoes in the surrounding hills and across the me 


of Charley Hurrekan. 

If ever there was truth and appropriateness in names — 
our friend Charley possessed the right one in Hurre- 4 
kan. It is true that phonetics rather than orthography _ 
brought up the association to the mind in this case, 
but it was not the less powerfully done, and no one © 
could be with the man a couple of minutes, and then _ 
hear his name, without a smile springing to the lip _ 


which had its origin in a lively sense of the fitness of _ 
176 . 


A HUMAN CYCLONE. 177 


certain things, but concerning which fitness no one 
eared to speak with Mr. Hurrekan. 

One striking fact connected with the breezy, stormy 
Mr. Hurrekan was his possession of a marvelous phy- 
sical strength. Tis feats of lifting, hurling, boxing and 
wrestling had brought him into immediate notice and 
great fame with those who admire those kind of per- 
formances. No one cared to feel the force of his iron- 
like fist. but many considered it a high honor to have 
been allowed to touch the great swelling muscles of his 
herculean arm. 

Another notable feature of the man was the fire that 
fairly gleamed and glittered in his black eyes when he 
turned them in anger on one; it gave a kind of shock, 
and as a painful experience ranked next to encounter- 
ing his sledge-like fist. 

It had fallen to the lot of our friend Charley on the 
celebration of the “Fourth” to sponge the cannon and 
ram in the load after each discharge; and he was doing 
this in his usual! rapid, careless style when the gun went 
off of its own accord through the heated metal, and 
the young man lost his left arm and eye. 

He was placed quickly in a litter and borne to an 
adjacent hotel, where physicans labored to save him, 
but with little hope. Later.in the night a preacher, 
the presiding elder of the district, was called in to pray 


178 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. = 


with the desperately wounded man. On what was su] 
posed to be his deathbed, young Hurrekan professed 
“acing in Christ, pi was converted. 


the ministry. But our convert’s zeal cooled off when he 
recovered his health and he began to avoid the preacher < 
who had been such a faithful friend. Nor was he sorry 
that the district duties of the elder called him away 
much of the time, preventing the looking up of the % 
wanderer and his restoration to the fold. , 

Meantime the gigantic strength of the man returned, — 
and it was said that the power of both members had 
gone into the right arm. He secured a false eye, and, 
appearing on the street, looked exactly like his former % 
self but for the empty coat sleeve swinging by his left — 
side. 

A few months rolled by, when K——,, the minister — 
referred to above, was crossing the Mississippi River 
in a large ferry boat, and saw Hurrekan sitting in 
a fine two-horse rig driven by a negro in livery, while’ 5 
blazing sentences on the leather curtains of the vehicle 
declared the manifold virtues of some kind of patent 


medicine. KK looked gravely at the head and 


A HUMAN CYCLONE. 179 


chief of this rainbow affair, and Hurrekan winced and 
directed his gaze down the river. 

At the Terminal Depot, the newly-fledged doctor 
_ turned his horses and wagon over to the railroad agent 
to be shipped to him on the next freight, and then hur- 
ried away to, catch the passenger train. He and his 
gaily-dressed servant entered one of the coaches, and 
after a little began unpacking a nice-looking basket, 
displaying thereby a luncheon of broiled chicken, beef 
tongue, pickles, a salad and light bread. Last he drew 
forth a bottle of wine and glass tumbler. 

Just then, happening to glance up, he saw K—— 
only a few feet away silently contemplating him. The 
eyes of Hurrekan instantly fell to the floor, and:a deep 
red stole into his face. There was also an immediate 
loss of appetite, and the tempting food was soon given 
to the ebony attendant sitting just behind him. After 
he did this, the worried man turned his body slightly 
and fastened a dejected look through the window on the 


flying scenery outside. 


In another moment K took the vacant seat by 
his side and, laying his hand on Hurrekan’s shoulder, 
said: 
“Do you think that you are treating the Lord right ?” 
“No, I don’t,” the Jonah answered, striking the bench 


before him a heavy blow with his big fist. 


180 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. _ 


“What are you going to do about it?” persist 
K-——. 


one after another through the open ofan Thal 
turning to K——, with a resolute look, he said: 
“T’m going to do the clean and right thing.” 


“T rejoice to hear you say so,” replied K 
I understand you to be willing to go forth and wee fom 
Christ on a poor circuit for slim wages?” 
“Yes, if He will forgive me for my past failure and 
faithlessness.” And tears sprang into the man’s eyes. 
“Te will do it,” returned K ; : 
“He has already done it,” cried Hurrekan, loo king 


up with a beaming face. 
The hands of the two men met, and propositions were a 
made and plans agreed upon. 


The result was that Hurrekan promised K toy 
meet him at his next quarterly conference a week later. 
He left the train at the first large town, where he sold - 
his gaudy wagon and richly caparisoned horses, paid off 


and discharged his servant, and then, according to 


promise, overtook K in a town fifty miles away. 


Here he joined the church one day, and was licensed — 


K 


then sent him nearly one hundred miles away as 4 


A HUMAN CYCLONE. 181 


a supply to a cireuit which had lost its regular pastor. 
He said in parting with his late acquisition: 

“T turn you loose on that country. They need just 
such a man as yourself.” 

Now, in “turning Hurrekan loose” was indeed the 
loosing of a hurricane; and so the people of that far- 
away circuit found out with a vengeance. On being 
asked after the first round how they liked their new 
preacher, they looked bewildered and strikingly like 
men who had just passed through a cyclone. 

The first thing that the Rev. Mr. Hurrekan did after 
devoting several days to the study of his flock and re- 
ceiving reports about them, was to throw the church 
register into the fire with the simple and startling ex- 
planation : 

“Not one of you are fit to be in the church, and I 
am going to make every one of you join over again and 
start afresh.” 

And they did; for the pounding of that great fist on 
the sacred desk, and the blazing of that right eye in 
the pulpit seemed to leave no other course open for 
them. 

One day in one of his meetings a couple of young 
men made a disturbance in the congregation, where- 
upon Hurrekan closed the Bible from which he was 
reading, walked down the aisle and deliberately col- 


182 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


laring one of them, lifted him bodily from his seat, 
trotted the amazed man to the door and pitched him 


into the yard. Returning to the second offender who 


sat almost paralyzed in the pew, he served him after 


an identical fashion. 

Of course, all this packed the new preacher’s church, 
and at the same time secured the very best attention, 
and a most respectful hearing. Another thing which 
contributed to the good order was, that Hurrekan could 
not close his eyelid over the glass eye which he wore; 
and no one knowing that he had but one organ of sight 
supposed that he was praying with one eye open in 
order to catch some transgressor. So the sight of that 
big black optic staring fixedly on the audience, and 
backed up as it was with that sledgehammer fist, in- 


spired a stillness in the congregation and a decorum 


that for perfectness had never been known before in 
those regions. 

In the summer our hero attended a camp meeting, 
where the order was anything but good. Coming into 
the service late one day, Hurrekan sat in the rear of 
the tabernacle and several seats in front of three young 
men who were acting outrageously. He turned several 
times and told-them to behave themselves, but they 
rather grew worse. When suddenly he fixed his blaz- 


ing eye upon the group and started for them. Per- 


A HUMAN CYCLONE. 183 


fectly panic-struck and not waiting to reach the aisle 
they tumbled over the benches, and over one another 
in their frantic efforts to escape. Hurrekan was so close 
upon them, however, that there was nothing left them 
but to make a flying leap over a barbed wire fence 
which surrounded the grounds. This they just man- 
aged to do, but not without leaving small portions of 
their garments on the little spearheads where they flut- - 
tered for several days to the great amusement of many 
who had them pointed out while being told the story. 

Just before Conference, K- held his fourth quar- 


erly meeting in wn on Hurrekan’s circuit, where 
terly meeting in a to Hurrekan’ t, wh 


that clerical gentleman was least known. On Saturday 
the two preachers were eating dinner together at the 
hotel and quietly talking about the prospects of the 
pastoral charge. At another table sat a group of men 
who were evidently drinking and disposed to be noisy. 
One in especial conceived, as he thought, a brilliant 
plan of having a great deal of fun out of two preachers, 
one of whom had only one arm, while the other was a 
grave, quiet sort of man. 

So, taking up a bottle of liquor from his ‘able, and 
pretending to be more intoxicated than he was, the 
man walked over to the ministers and declared that 
he wanted them to drink with him, and started to pour 


the red liquid in their glasses. 


184 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. __ 


Hurrekan looked up at the man with a dangerous 
gleam in his eye and said: 
“We do not drink, sir.” 


“But I want you to drink,” was his reply, “and what 


is more I am determined that you shall.” 
Tlurrekan, in a voice of suppressed passion and — 
lightning in his eye, said: : 
“My friend, if you were aware of it, you are at pres- _ 
ent in an exceedingly unhealthy place for yourself.” 
The only notice that the obtruder took of this speech — 
was to endeavor with an unsteady hand to fill the 
preacher’s glass with whisky, when, quick as an electric © 


tounded person by the throat, lifted him entirely from _ 
the floor and shot him through the air for a distance of 
ten feet and landed him with a crash upon the floor. Be- _ 
fore the man could arise Hurrekan was upon him again, 
jerked him up and pinioned him against the wall with — 
his long powerful fingers about his neck. y 

While he held his prisoner in this garroting style, : 
the preacher proceeded to address some caustic re- 


other things, he enlarged upon the wisdom of being 
polite to strangers; and the excceding advisability of 
letting people alone with whom he had no business; and 


A HUMAN CYCLONE. 185 


if he would do such things, then the good sense in 
finding out their strength before attacking them. 

With this lecture, as Hurrekan called it, and for 
which he told the man he charged him nothing, he sud- 
denly shifted his hand, caught him by the back of his 
neck and propelled him at a two-forty pace through the 
room, out on the gallery and shot him like a catapult 
_ down the front steps into the street. The man, now 
thoroughly terrorized and also sobered, struck the 
ground running and kept up the gait the preacher had 
initiated him into, and as far as he could be seen was 
making tracks for some unknown refuge or asylum 
of rest. 

At the Annual Conference in December, K——,, Hur- 
rekan, and the writer were assigned to the home of a 
sweet-faced elderly lady who was a member of the 
Methodist Church. 

As we listened to the loud tones and marked the 
stormy ways of.our demonstrative friend in this quiet 
family, we were in actual pain for him and our enter- 
tainer. But to our surprise the lady showed not the 
least sign of displeasure, but the contrary. 

One morning in our bedroom, something was said 
of a humorous nature which so tickled our hero that 
he burst into shouts of laughter and stentorian yells, 
while striking his fist on a little center table with great 


186 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


of furniture, made everything on the mantel jingl 
and jump, and shook even the house. 

We went out to breakfast feeling deeply mortified 
over the affair and especially sorry for Hurrekan. So 
we fully expected to see an offended look on the face of 3 
our hostess; but to our amazement her countenance 
fairly beamed on our Boanerges, and she had him to” 
sit next to her, and kept his plate heaped with the best — 
on the table. | 

Several mornings after this, we three were walking 
through the back yard, when Hurrekan, spying a small 
sharp-roofed coop about four feet high with a big tur-— 
key gobbler in it, fattening for the table, immediately 
cried out to us: ; 

“Watch me jump it.” % 

And running towards the little siraeeiee he at-y 
tempted to clear it, when seeing he could not, he kicked — 
it over as he arose in the air; whereupon the turkey 4 
got out with a tremendous amount of gobblings and flut- 
terings, and then a perfect pandemonium reigned for — 
several minutes in the yard made up of barking dogs, — 
squalling chickens, sputtering cats and laughing ne- 
groes, until the din and uproar were terrific. . 

Feeling genuinely distressed and chagrined for Hur- 
rekan, who was hallooing at the top of his voice, we — s 


A HUMAN CYCLONE. 187 


glanced anxiously at the house and there beheld our 
hostess standing on the back gallery with her face 
wreathed in smiles and surveying the noisy scene and 
‘the author of it with the highest good humor and ap- 
proval. 

To crown all, on the last day of the Conference when 
we were leaving the hospitable home and bidding our 
and the writer 


kind entertainer adieu, she gave K 
a friendly clasp of the hand, but in Hurrekan’s palm 
she slipped a twenty-dolfar bill. 

After this we lost sight of our obstreperous friend 
for several years. Having been sent to a distant city, 
not so much as a rumor reached us concerning him. 

One day, while on a return trip, we saw him stand- 
ing in front of a store, the meekest and quietest look- 
ing of men. We spoke to him, expecting the old-time 
loud laugh and stormy outburst ; but nothing of the kind 
happened. We were in his presence an hour and failed 
to witness the least particle of the former boisterous- 
ness and noisiness. We of course could not with any 
propriety ask him what was the matter, but we were 
amazed all the same and left him with a deep wonder 
relative to the silent, meek, and subdued-looking man. 

The next day we met a mutual friend and said at 
once: . 

“What on earth is the matter with Hurrekan? We 


never saw a man as much changed, and as co 
whipped-out in appearance as he is.” 
“Don’t you know ?” 


“Of course not, or we would not have aul you 


What is the matter with him?” 
“Suppose you guess.” 
“Ts he sick?” we asked. 
“No.7” 
“Flas he lost money ?”’ 
SoINigta 
“Has he lost a member of his family ?” 
“No, he has gained one.” 
“What do you mean ?” 


“T mean, that he is married!” 


XXL 
THE BREAKING OF A BRUISED REED. 


WO evangelists were conducting a meeting in one 

of our large inland cities. One night the speaker 

of the hour had his attention drawn to the face of a 

woman in the audience on account of its perfectly hope- 

less expression. It was a fine countenance, but some 

kind of happening in the past had evidently stolen 

away the brightness, and left it with the appearance 
of having been turned to stone. 

We have seen a smitten life in the past, whose soli- 
tariness and silence made us think somehow of waves 
breaking with solemn sound on lonely, barren shores; 
or we would have summoned up a human figure stand- 
ing on a prominent headland watching the sun going 
down for the last time in the billows of the sea. In 
some such way the melancholy unexpectant face in the 
congregation affected us; and yet this stunned, lifeless- 
looking countenance belonged to a young married 
woman, not over twenty-four years of age. 

One night as the people were going out of the 


church, she passed near the speaker, when in deepest 
189 


190 EEMAEKABLE OOCURRENCES 


pity for a sorrow-laden soul be reached out iis hh 
and said: “God bless your heart.” 


bebeld manifested im the look of dmmb brates. i: 
remembered a dog which be had once stooped over am 
er nyvthin 


was the same he saw im the woman. 

One night she was not in her place, amd on her re 
appearance mext day he said: 

“IT missed you last night.” And agaim there sprang 
up for just a moment the same touched look, as thongl 
so simple a speech meant moch to her, ¢ 

Tt seems that it is throngh acts of courtesy and-deeds 
of Kindness that the door of many hearts has to b 
opened to receive the messages of God; and so it was 
in the case of Evel G—— A glance of pity and 
interest where none had been expected, was the first 
swallow of 2 coming spring. It makes a great differ: 
ence in the appearance ef this world when we have one 
person im it who cares for us| And the Gospel itself 
has a different sound when we are not alone im life 
but stand enriched and blessed with the friendship 
and love of others around us. ’ 


THE BREAKING OF A BRUISED REED. 191 


Anyhow, a door was opened somewhere in this long- 
shut-up life, the Spirit of God got in, and one night 
the young woman came to the altar. Other nights 
found her there, and it was evident that a terrible con- 
flict was going on within her soul. 

She asked for no counsel, sought no sympathy, re- 
flected on nobody, but with set features and groanings 
of spirit rather than with the lips, she seemed to be 
engaged in a life and death struggle on some hidden 
battlefield of the heart. 

One person alone knew her past life, and all unsolic- 
ited we were told by that individual a history that 
made the heart ache and the tears run swiftly down the 
face. There had been sin, but under such circumstances 
of girlish ignorance, innocence and betrayal of trust, 
that one could but wonder why the thunderbolts of jus- 
tice and judgment did not fall from the skies and 
destroy the man who was the blighter and blaster under 
the guise of adviser and protector. 

Nevertheless all wrongs of earth must be forgiven 
if we ourselves would receive the pardon of Heaven. 
So the day came when the brcken-hearted woman for- 
gave the injurer and placed the lifelong wound under 
the Blood, when with a ery of joy that penetrated and 
thrilled every soul in the audience she flung herself 
back in the arms of her mother, and with clasped hands 


192 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


and radiant face looked like a being just arrived from — 
the Glory World. 

In the remaining days of the meeting, it was a bene-— 
diction to see her soul drinking deep at the fountain, 
and eating of the Gospel manna which was raining 
upon and around her. She had been thirsty and hun- 
gry so long! And then she had been hopeless so long! 
From sixteen to twenty-four she had eaten, drank, 
walked, slept and awoke under a cloud of impenetrable 
blackness. And it was growing blacker as the months 
rolled by! And the whisper of the Devil to commit 
suicide was getting louder! And her heart was becom- 
ing harder !—until the meeting came on, which brought 
Christ to her soul in pardon, peace, victory, and blessed 
salvation. 

Months afterward when far away across the conti- 
nent we received letters telling us of the good this 
woman was doing. She had taken an active interest in 
church work. Instead of asking for a Sunday school 
class, she went out on the streets and found or made 
one. She spent a certain portion of each day in visit- 
ing the sick and helping the poor. She divided repeat- 
edly the little store in her purse with the needy; did 
it with happy tears welling up in her eyes, and then 
would crown the visit of mercy with a fervent, loving 


THE BREAKING OF A BRUISED REED. 193 


prayer sent direct to the Throne from a room or cabin 
of abject poverty. 

Other letters were written telling how she had or- 
ganized a mission in a neglected part of the city; and 
following this news came still another communication 
stating that she had been elected organist of the church 
Sunday school. Every succeeding report for a whole 
year was of this character, and filled the heart with 
thanksgiving for such a beautifully redeemed life. 

Then came a long silence of months; and one day 
a letter arrived stating that certain lady members of 
the church had dug up something relative to the past 
history of Evelyn G 
culating it. That when the reports first reached Mrs. 


G 


duties just the same, trying to be bright and cheerful 


and were industriously cir- 


she seemed much shocked, but went on in her 


as before. But the talk had increased to such an extent 
that a number of the female members had dropped her 
socially, eut her publicly in the church work and re- 
ligious services, and their victim was steadily sinking 
under the treatment. 

Another letter several months afterward reported 
that the division in the church over the case 
of Mrs. G—— had steadily increased in grav- 
ity. That various tongues kept fanning the 


flames and adding more fuel, as if determined to 


194 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


destroy the soul which Christ had saved. One report 
was that she had ruined a preacher’s usefulness; a see- 
ond that she had deceived her husband; a third that 
she had always been bad from girlhood, ete., ete. 

The letter said that Mrs. G 
lips in reply to anything or anybody; that she never 


never opened her 


struck back, but looked like a wounded fawn facing 
with great melancholy eyes the hunters and hounds 
who were seeking its death. 

After this came still other tidings through which 
we learned that she had given up her class in Sun- 
day school, ceased her mission work, and came very 
rarely to church. That when she did attend public 
worship she would sit in the last pew, and would leave 
hurriedly at the close, without speaking to a soul. 

A whole year more rolled by and once again we vis- 
ited the city where three years before we had witnessed 
a wonderful revival, and among the number saved had 
been made to rejoice over the remarkable case we have 
just described. We went promptly to the street and 
number where she had formerly lived, and rang the _ 
bell. A strange face appeared at the door, and to in- 


quiries replied that Mrs. G no longer lived there, 


and that she did not know where she resided. : 
Going to the house of a church member in the neigh- 


borhood, we were told by that good lady that Mrs. 


f 


THE BREAKING OF A BRUISED REED. 195 


G—’s husband had left her, and that she had gone 
to live with her mother in a distant part of the city, 
fully twenty or thirty blocks away. After taking down 
the address we asked: 

“Does Mrs. G 

“No, indeed. She has not darkened our church 
doors for nearly a year. She likes other places better 
than the House of God.” 


“What do you mean?” we inquired. 


ever come to church 2” 


“T mean,” replied the lady with a severely virtuous 
look, ‘that she goes to theatres on week nights, and to 
the parks on Sunday. The last time I heard from her, 
six or seven months ago, she was with a set of worldly 
people in the largest theatre down town.” 

“Poor dear heart,” we said, with a big ache in our 
own. 

“T think you are wasting pity on a very bad woman,” 
was the rejoinder of our Christian friend. 

After a moment’s pause we said: 

“My sister, do you remember one of the most touch- 
ing descriptions in prophecy about the Saviour ?” 

“T don’t know that I do.” 

“T am afraid,” we returned, “that many of Christ’s 
followers do not know it.” 

“What is the prophecy ?” the woman asked with some 


interest. 


196 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. _ 


“Here it is,” we replied, reading from Tania 
“<The bruised reed will He not break; and smoking * 
flax will He not quench.’” Then closing the book we a 
said: “Here is stated the exceeding tenderness of the — 
Saviour with those who have been afflicted, injured and r 


all but wounded to death in the battle of life. The per- 
son in his desire for goodness and heaven may not real- 
ize a flame in the heart, but have instead a mere fireless 


smoking that is seen in flax when drying. And yet 


even that feeble spiritual state the Lord will not despise. 
As for one who has been bruised by sin, so that a touch 
would break the poor reed-like character, even that one 
is safe with the Redeemer, for instead of crushing what 
is already nearly ruined by the Devil, Jesus would re- 


store and save every such heart-broken and undone 


man or woman.” 

The lady before us was silent and solemn enorgh 
now, while we continued: 

“The young woman whom the pitiless tongues in 
your church drove from duty and the House of God to 
the theatre, and back to the world, was not the bad 
character you thought and said she was. We know her 
history, and the bitter wrongs heaped upon her all 
through her life to this hour. She sinned, but was more 
sinned against than sinning. She was betrayed where 
she had a right to expect protection and safety. She 


THE BREAKING OF A BRUISED REED. 197 


never deceived her husband but told him all before 
marriage. He was a brute to her after he wedded her, 
but she was true to him. Neither was she the bad girl 
that rumor said she was. Those who know her past 
life best declare that she was a bright, happy, innocent 
girl until the disaster came upon her at sixteen. We 
wrote these facts to several individuals here in the midst 
of the tongue storm raised against her, but it seems 
that truth was not the thing that was wanted, but the 
heart-break and utter overthrow of a young woman who 
was trying to save her soul, do better, and gain 
Heaven !” 

Noticing the increasingly disturbed look on our au- 
ditor’s face, we added: 

“The difference between Jesus Christ and your 
church is that He wants to save souls and you prefer 
to destroy them. He would mend and restore the 
bruised reed, while your people would break one with 
every opportunity. You will excuse me, my sister, in 
saying that your church may have Christianity, but 
they certainly do not possess Christ. And more than 
that, if your membership has religion, it is not the kind 
which the world wants to see, and that it must have, to 
lift it up from its fallen condition into light, hope, 


faith, salvation and a better life.” 
25 ss = 


198 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


An half hour after this scene we were threading our 
way along some dingy streets, hunting for the child-— 
hood home of Evelyn G It stood, we were told, . 
several blocks back from the river but overlooking the - 


same as it swept with broad and majestic current to- 
wards the South. eg 

The streets became hilly and broken, and the house i 
straggling, before we stood before the one we sought. 
The porch was dusty, the side and back yards silent and — 
empty, and the window shutters all closed. 

We rang the doorbell, but only got echoes and the 
barking of a distant dog for our pains. We rang again, — | 
and a plainly-dressed, tired-looking woman came to a — 
window of the next house and said “‘Nobody’s at home.” 
Coming nearer to her, we lifted our hat and asked: 
“Does the mother of Mrs. G 


“Yes, sir, but she is not at home to-day, and hardly mA 


live here ?” 


ever is. Poor soul, I don’t wonder that she wants to 
get away.” ' 
“What is her trouble?’ we asked, with a vague fear o 
arising in the heart. a 
“Tt is not trouble, sir, but troubles. Her only son 
is in the Philippines; then her two oldest daughters 
are married, moved away and she hardly ever hears 
from them; and now the last one is gone.” 
“Does not Mrs. G 


live here with her mother?” 


THE BREAKING OF A BRUISED REED. 199 


“She did, sir, but she is gone now, and has been for 
over four months.” 

“Where is she ?” 

“Nobody knows. Some say she is in Chicago; others 
say New York. I don’t believe that her own mother 
knows where she is.” 

A few more words were exchanged which brought no 
additional light, and the woman disappeared in the 
depths of her house. 

We returned and sat down on the porch steps of 
Evelyn’s silent and desolate home, and surrendered the 
mind up to reflections of the most melancholy nature. 

Some children were playing in the roadway farther 
down the street. A dog was lazily and dreamily watch- 
ing them as he was stretched upon a front gallery. The 
whole neighborhood in the quict, almost pulseless after- 
noon air seemed asleep. Far across the wide river 
stretched a landscape of fields shut in by a distant range 
of purple hills, and beyond them a low misty line of 
fleecy clouds rested on the horizon. 

As we looked from the doorstep upon the scene we 
said aloud: 

“And far beyond those hills and clouds, somewhere 
on the face of the earth, roams Evelyn G 
broken heart!” 


Just then a hand-organ in the distance commenced 


with a 


200 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. —__ 


playing “The Sweetest Story Ever Told.” There 
a swift rush of tears to the eyes, and we thought: 
“Ah, well! It was sweet to her once, but it became 


have helped her. What has she to make her seek an 4 
trust human affection again? Will she ever do so again? 
And if she is lost at last who is most to blame! A nd 
when the judgment of God falls, will it come heaviest 
beat back and down a soul that was trying to quit sin, 
leave the world, and find its way to Christ, safety, duty 
and Heaven ?”’ 

The evening came on, the children went away, 2 
the strains of the organ had long ago ceased. We walked E 
down to the river bank where the yellow waves broke | 


happy, innocent girl she had many times heard these — 
lapping waves on the shore. They remained still, but — 
where now was the injured woman? Far from her — 
childhood’s home, and farther still from her God, where — 
was she ? ‘- 


THE BREAKING OF A BRUISED REED. 201 


And the question would keep coming up as if insist- 
ing on a definite and final answer. | 

“Who is most to blame, the bruised reed or those 
who broke the bruised reed ?” 

Then as if in reply memory recalled a Bible scene 
in which a woman figured whose history was darker 
than that of Evelyn G——. In that living picture of 
old, the guilty one had been dragged before Christ and 
clamor was made that she should be stoned according 
to the law of Moses. And then while human tongues 
lashed and raged around the silent and trembling vic- 
tim, the Holy One who knew no sin stooped and wrote 
on the ground as though He heard them not. Finally 
He arose and said unto the accusing crowd: “He that 
is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at 
her.” And once more He stooped and traced that 
strange, unknown writing in the dust. 

When He stood up again the accusers were all gone; 
and He concerning whom prophecy said He would not 
break a bruised reed, spoke kindly to the crushed, un- 
happy woman, and planted a new hope in her heart, 
opened up a new life before her eyes, and swung 
Heaven itself in front of her exultant soul in the words, 


“Go, and sin no more.” 


XXII. 
A STARTLING CONFESSION. 


PROMINENT minister of the Gospel once stated 
in his pulpit that he had listened in his Study to 
_ such ghastly life histories from desperate looking men, 
that more than a dozen times he had been ready to take 
flight from the scene, and would have done so if the 
narrator had made the slightest aggressive movement 
toward him. 

In keeping with this remarkable statement, the writer 
can say that confessions have been made him in the 
past of such unusual character and dreadful nature, that 
he verily believes that nothing in the way of divulgence 
of sin and crime could now astonish him. 

These revelations of a hidden and unsuspected life, 
were like lightning flashes illumining a dark forest 
teeming with creatures unseen before; or like a sud- 
den vision into another world peopled with beings and 
characters unknown and unimagined up to that hour. 

We have seen a stately mansion surrounded with 
lovely shade trees and beautified with lawn and flower 


garden, and were told while admiring it that a hor- 
202 


: 


A STARTLING CONFESSION. 203 


rible crime had been committed inside its walls. As 
we looked again after that shocking statement, and saw 
the sunlight falling lovingly upon the balustraded porch, 
we thought how little there was to indicate the unhappy 
history which had occurred within. The pigeons were 
cooing and skimming about the eaves, some happy voiced 
children attended by their nurse were playing on the 
lawn, while a large Newfoundland dog stood under the 
trees gravely and approvingly contemplating the scene. 
Tt was all so fair and peaceful, that one could scarcely 
eredit the dark tragedy which had been enacted there 
only a few months previous, and yet a double murder 
of a most frightful and unnatural character had been 
committed in that place. 

Equally startled have we been to find that the grave, 
quiet, dignified man in the audience was an escaped 
convict, and that the innocent looking woman with a 
girlish face had three living husbands, and was stained 
with an awful crime besides. 

From these things we gather that we know very little 
of what is transpiring behind the walls of our neigh- 
bor’s house; and next to nothing about the people who 
jostle us on the street, and sit by us on the car and in 
the church. It is only now and then we get a flash which 
lights up the woods, and we see a panther lying on the 


limb of a tree, a scorpion on a log, and a snake coiled 


204 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


up under a bush by the side of the narrow path where 
we are walking. Or, to change the figure, a door or 
window blind is suddenly opened, and we mark faces 
and forms all unknown to the street and undreamed of 
by us until that moment. ;, 

At a certain camp meeting in the South, one of the 
preachers in a sermon at night held up the dreadfulness 
of concealed iniquity. The discourse fell upon the ears 
of a profoundly awed and conscience smitten audience, 
although there was but little outward demonstration 
at the altar. It seemed that a number shrank from 
coming forward after such a fearful delineation, lest 
such a movement would be to spot and mark themselves 
as acknowledged criminals and violators of law in the 
grossest sense. 

Next morning the writer was in his tent, engaged 
in preparation for the morning sermon, while the 
Testimony meeting was in progress at the Tabernacle 
about an hundred feet away. Suddenly a shriek of 
agony, ascending from the place of worship, literally 
rent the air. The scream came from a woman, and we 
knew from the shocked, horror-stricken accent that 
whoever gave it was a heart-broken person. We scarce- 
ly ever heard a cry which so deeply moved us. It 
carried its own misery with it, and the listener could 


A STARTLING CONFESSION. 205 


not but respond in spirit to nature’s wail over the in- 
coming of a colossal sorrow. 

After this startling interruption there was a pro- 
found silence of an half hour, and then came the sound 
of the people leaving the Tabernacle and their scatter- 
ing along the tent-lined streets. Glancing out, we saw 
that all were talking earnestly and knew that they were 
discussing the incident of that morning. 

Recognizing a gentleman, we called him aside and 
asked why the woman had given that fearful scream. 
He replied, “Her husband made a confession this morn- 
ing,” and then related the circumstance. 

It seemed that this husband, whose name was D, 
was one of the convicted ones in the audience of the 
night before. Next morning he accompanied his wife 
to the Experience meeting, to her great joy, as she 
fancied she saw in his gloomy face signs of conviction, 
the natural precursor of salvation. 

He took his seat just behind her, and after a number 
had testified, he arose to his feet as pale as death, and 
with a faltering voice said. 

“T have kept a load of guilt on my heart for thirty 
long years. I cannot stand it any longer. It is killing 
me by inches. I want to say here before everybody, 
that just after the close of the war I killed a man!” 


Whether he intended to say more or not we do not 


206 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


know, for just as these last words were uttered, the wife 
gave the agonized cry we heard in the tent, and fell 
upon the ground at the feet of her husband unconscious. 

Something of the shock may be imagined, when the 
thought rushed over her: 

“The father of my children is a murderer! The man 
with whom I have been most intimate on earth, who has 
gone with me through life side by side, has his hands 
red with the blood of a fellow creature!” 

No wonder she went down senseless in the dust. 

We next asked our informant where the woman was 
and was told that she had been borne to an adjacent 
room by sympathizing friends. Our following ques- 
tion was, “Where is the man?” and the reply was, “He 
has gone to his tent.” 

In a few minutes we found him there, lying on a 
cot and looking more like a dead than a living man. 
Taking a camp stool by his side we laid our hand upon 
his and found it cold and clammy, while his body was 
trembling as with a chill. With a heart full of pity, 
we said: 

“My brother, are you not glad that you made a clean ~ 
breast of your guilt to-day ?” 

Turning a pair of despairing eyes upon us he an- 
swered : 

“Mr. C., the law will hang me.” 


: 


A STARTLING CONFESSION. 207 


“Hang or no hang,” we replied, “are you not glad 
that you have gotten that black stuff out of your heart 
which has been weighing it down for thirty years?” 

Grasping our hand, and with a look of unspeakable 
relief upon his face, he said in a firm, manly tone: 

“God in heaven knows that I am.” 

It is not necessary to dwell on other particulars of 
the case occurring at this immediate time. Suffice it 
to say that D. went home, submitted to arrest, was cast 
into jail, and underwent his trial. 

The Scripture plainly teaches that when we do what 
God bids us, He will take us up, fight our battles and 
deliver us from all our trouble. This was what took 
place with D. The Lord touched the heart of judge 
and jury; moved on men here and there; brought 
first one thing and then another to pass, and com- 
pletely delivered the man. 

The words of the Psalmist could have been truly 
appropriated and repeated by him in description of what 
had been done for him and in him: “He hath delivered 
my soul from death, mine eyes from tears and my feet 


from falling.” 


There was a strange literal fulfillment 
of the verse in his case. His feet did not fall through 
the trap door of the scaffold; his eyes were saved from 


weeping through the pardoning and consoling love of 


208 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


Christ, and his spirit as well as body were not given over 
unto death, but were both brought forth from imprison- 
ment and bondage, into life and liberty according to the 
promise of the Almighty. 

Such was the man’s gratitude for the salvation of his 
soul while in prison, and for the rescue of his life from 
the law soon after, that he would not wait for the next 
camp meeting to obtain holiness of heart, but sought the 
blessing at once, and months before the regular annual 
encampment he had swept into Beulah Land and was 
one of the strong ones in Canaan when we next beheld 
him. , 

Repeatedly the writer and his Singer met this doubly 
redeemed man during the camp which followed the one 
mentioned in the beginning of this sketch, and we both 
had to admit that among the bright, restful faces 
we beheld in the meeting, that the most peaceful one of 
all was that of the man who the year before had made 
such a startling and terrible confession. 


XXIII. 
TH HISTORY OF A PRAYER. 


N a small town in Kentucky lived a godly woman 

by the name of Mary M., whose heart was greatly 
burdened for the salvation of the people of her com- 
munity. Very often in secret she poured out, with 
tears, her petition that God would send the place a 
sweeping revival of New Testament pattern and power. 
It is the biography of this prayer which forms the body 
of this sketch, and a most remarkable history it was. 

We gather from the Bible that God hearkens to our 
requests, and is pledged to answer them if offered in 
the right spirit, and we will abide in faith and faithful- 
ness. One other condition, however, is clearly exacted 
of Heaven, and that is that the time of fulfillment be 
left in the hands of the Lord. 

Several facts make this understanding to be impera- 
tive. One alone which we mention is sufficient to sat- 
isfy any reasonable mind, viz., the moral freedom of 
people with whom God has to work in order to answer 
the petition. The angel told Daniel that he had been 


hindered three weeks in coming to him, by the Prince 
209 


210 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


of the Kingdom of Persia. This Prince in his oppo- 
sition brings out at once in the most vivid manner the 
stubbornness, ignorance, prejudice, sinfulness and spirit 
liberty itself which so often stand in between us, and 
the coming messenger and message of relief and glad- 
ness sent us from the skies. In a word, hindrances still 
exist to our reception of what we are told in the Word 
we can properly pray for as a comfort and blessing 
to our own life and that of others. 

In view of the things desired, and the mental and 
moral constitution of men, God tells us to “wait on 
Him,” to “patiently wait,” and the promise is that He 
will bring, what we plead for, to pass. 

If ever a woman had need to exercise faith it was 
Mary M., after she begged God with strong cries and 
tears for the revival. For years there was not a sign 
that the petition had even been noticed by heaven. 

True it was, that a long while after several preachers 
confessed that during those very years they were deeply 
moved to hold a meeting in the town where this woman 
supplicator lived, but they allowed the impression to 
pass away. The solitary pleader for the community 
however, did not know this, and so kept on in her pray- 
ing under an obviously impenetrable sky, and to a God 
who did not seem to hear, and certainly did not answer. 

In the Bible we read that when the Lord could not 


THE HISTORY OF A PRAYER. a ik 


find a prophet in Israel to carry a message of rebuke and 
warning to His idolatrous people, He reached His hand 
down in Judah and brought forth a man of God from 
that country to do His will. 

In like manner there was a scarcity of human in- 
struments in the land where Mary M. lived, and God 
looked around in vain to find a man who would bear 
a message to the town of S., which would make that 
community to sigh and weep over its sins, and cause 
at the same time his daughter, who had mourned so 
long, to cease her crying and go to rejoicing over the 
fulfillment of her often uttered supplication. 

So the divine eye was turned in the Judah direction, 
and the divine hand began to prepare other instruments 
outside of the town of S. and beyond its county boun- 
daries, and far from the state itself, who were to bring 
salvation to the people and prove to that grieving ser- 
vant of His that God was still, as He has always been, 
One who not only hears but also answers prayer. 

In the State of Mississippi and removed from S. 
by fully six hundred miles, was a young preacher named 
H. who was hungry for full salvation, but did not en- 
tirely understand the nature of his own longing. He 
prayed much, and even agonized, but there was no 
Philip passing along this desert portion of his life to 
ask him as he read and supplicated if he understood 


212 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


his own reading and prayers. No Ananias came into 
those days of spiritual bewilderment and at times 
blindness and darkness, with the command to arise, and 
be filled with the Holy Ghost. 

While H. was in this state of mind, a newspaper 
reporter in the city of Louisville wrote a brief sketch 
or religious item about a holy woman who lived, as he 
stated, in a small town in the hill country of Kentucky. 
He mentioned several things concerning her, making 
in all an ordinary sized paragraph. But little as it was, 
it held in its narrow limits, in a strange way, the sancti- 
fication of the Mississippi preacher, and the long prayed 
for revival at S. 

Many thousand copies of that issue of the paper, the 
Courier-Journal, were scattered over the country and 
lost to view forever. But one sheet of the publication 
God determined should survive the general destruction. 
It fluttered South, and like a Messenger Bird as it 
proved, nestled in the hand and under the eye of H. 
Carelessly glancing down its columns the preacher read 
the following words: 

“There lives in 8., Kentucky, a woman named Mary 
M. She dwells in a small yellow cottage in the edge 
of the town and keeps the Toll Gate. She claims to 
have been sanctified, and—” 


This was all he read, but it was all God wanted 


THE HISTORY OF A PRAYER. 213 


him to see, and was all indeed that he needed. Like 
Eleazar when he recognized the hand of the Lord in 
confirmatory providences which guided him on his way 
to secure Rebecea for Isaac, so H. stood thrilled, and 
worshipped God as he felt that in a bit of printed paper 
he had beheld the directing finger of Heaven. 

He said to himself, “That is just what I need. I 
want to be sanctified.” 

In his case the instructing Philip was six hundred 
miles away, and if interview was to be had he would 
have to seek it, and be the traveler. Distance, however, 
was not the only drawback, but the lack of funds to 
meet railroad expenses stared him in the face. 

This naturally brought forth the prayer, “Lord, if 
this thing is from you, and you desire me to see that 
woman and obtain instruction from her, grant that the 
means necessary for the trip will be provided.” 

In a week’s time, a railroad pass and money neces- 
sary for incidental expenses were placed in his hands 
without any hint or solicitation on his part. 

A few days later this, seeker after truth alighted 
from the train at the place of destination and asked 
for the “yellow cottage” at the Toll Gate. Knocking 
at the door he inquired if Mary M. lived there, and 
was answered in the affirmative. Invited in the house 


he told her what he had come for, and as it does not 


214 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


take Holiness people long to enter upon business, the 
faithful woman and her sister began to instruct him in 
the way of the Lord “more perfectly,” and in a few min- 
utes were pleading mightily in prayer in his behalf, 
while he himself wept and prayed and groaned upon 
the floor. 

On the second or third day the fire fell, the long- 
desired blessing of sanctification swept into the emptied 
and completely consecrated soul, and H., full of joy 
and the Holy Ghost, was on his way back to Mississippi. 

It was after this that the writer began to hear much 
of H. Of course he was misunderstood by his congre- 
gation, and Conference, and so became acquainted very 
soon with the “Fiery Furnace,” obtained a great deal of 
positive light on the history and experience of Shadrack, 
Meshack and Abednego. He also received a kind of 
mental geographical chart of the Island of Patmos with 
a marvelous amount of insight intothe life of the famous 
exile on that wave-washed and solitary shore, a man who 
had been sent there on account of the Word of God, and 
the testimony of Jesus Christ! We heard that he was 
“clear off,” “a fanatic,” “usefulness ended,” ete., ete. 
But at the same time we were informed that he had con- 
stant revivals wherever he went. We do not know at 
this time of spiritual greenness and ignorance in our 
life, how we reconciled the two reports. Perhaps we did 


THE HISTORY OF A PRAYER. 915 


not try to harmonize them. The thing was high, and we 
had not then attained unto it. 

One rumor reached us that he, H., while preaching a 
great convicting sermon, had thrown a chair off the plat- 
form. Of course, to some who had never knocked the 
devil out of their church, nor kicked a sin out of their 
lives, nor hurled a sinner into the kingdom of heaven, 
all this was perfectly dreadful. In fact, it was the un- 
pardonable sin. Preachers could smoke their cigars and 
pipes, church members could break the Sabbath and tell 
impure stories, and all that could be readily overlooked. 
But for a man to overturn a chair in the sacred pulpit, 
while illustrating some truth under the power of the 
Spirit; Oh, that was fearful! terrible! sacrilegious! 
and not to be forgiven in this world nor in the world to 
come! 

At a session of an annual conference several members 
became exceedingly violent on the floor toward H. Two 
were especially bitter. One of them, turning towards 
the quiet-looking, peaceful-faced victim, shook his finger 
at him and vociferated to the chairman: 

“Bishop, I would rather the devil from hell should 
preach on my cireuit than that man!” 

The editor of a Christian Advocate, who afterwards 
became a Bishop, was present during this stormy and 


heart-sickening scene. His eyes, with the gaze of many 


216 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


others, rested upon the accused man; and in comment- 
ing upon the occurrence when all was over, he said: 

“The face of H. was the quietest and most peaceful in 
the entire Conference!” ; 

Soon after the scene related, H. was fairly driven by 
ecclesiastical pressure to take refuge in a distant West- 
ern Conference. The Spirit, however, followed him, 
and so, wherever he went, revivals sprang up and salva- 
tion flowed. 

One or more years passed away in this manner, when 
opposition similar to that from which he had fled became 
so great in the West that he turned back homeward 
again. 

At this time we heard again of him. It was the same 
old story of revivals and opposition, and opposition and 
revivals. The man seemed to be on the best terms with 
God, but somehow he could not please his brethren in 
the ministry. 

Meanwhile the writer, as pastor of a large city church, 
was hungry for something in the spiritual life that he 
did not know the name of, nor its exact nature. He was 
conscious at this period of desiring two things very 
ardently; one was a satisfying blessing for his own 
soul, and second a great, gracious, old-time, old-fash- 
ioned, Wesleyan, Apostolic, Scriptural Revival in his 
Church. 


THE HISTORY OF A PRAYER. 27! 


While praying about the matter and mentally casting 
about for human help, the face of H. was quietly and 
steadily presented to his mind with an unmistakable im- 
pression, “Send for him.” 

The invitation was forwarded, the invited came, and 
the meeting opened. The power of God fell on the 
fourth day. In the eight days’ meeting, one hundred 
souls were converted, twenty-five sanctified, and four 
young men entered the ministry. 

While listening to the third sermon of H. the writer 
suddenly saw not only the possibility but the actuality 
of the Second Work of Grace. He promptly bowed at 
the altar, came six times, and, after a complete consecra- 
tion, unquestioning faith in the Word of God, and three 
days of almost continuous prayer, one morning at 9 
o'clock, on June 1, 1889, the Baptism with the Holy 
Ghost and Fire fell upon, filled and literally over- 
whelmed him! 

All this may appear irrelevant to the subject of this 
sketch. It may seem that not only God had overlooked 
Mary M., but we, her biographer, had also forgotten her. 
But so far from this being the case, the circumstances 
just related made the highway along which was to come 
the long-deferred blessings of heaven to S. God was 
preparing servants to bring the message of gladness fo 
the heart of Mary M., who had been praying faithfully 


918 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


and persistently for ten years for the community she 
loved and in which she lived. 

Four years passed away after the writer received the 
Baptism with the Holy Ghost, which were spent by him 
in city pastorates. Meantime Mary M. prayed on for 
the town of S. 

Finally we entered the evangelistic work, and began 
to circle about the nation. After almost a year had 
been thus spent, the pastor of Mary M., a devout 
man, suddenly felt impressed to write to us to hold a 
meeting in his church. We accepted the call and came. 
Whereupon a gifted editor-evangelist said in his epi- 
grammatic and culminating way: “When C. jumped off 
the train one morning with his valise in his hand, the re- 
vival had come!” 

What need to speak of that revival, which has gone 
already into the history of the holiness movement? Suf- 
fice it to say that the power of God fell upon the people; 
that salvation rolled; that the meeting had to be moved 
twice to obtain larger quarters; that the brass band of 
a traveling troupe played in vain in front of the theater 
to secure an audience; not a dozen came; while at the 
largest church in town the people filled the seats, 
jammed the vestibule and aisles, crowded the chancel, 
lined the altar rail and sat on the floor in the pulpit to 
hear the Word of God, while scores and scores, with 


THE HISTORY OF A PRAYER. 219 


tears, laughter,shouts and clapping of hands, were swept 
into reclamation, regeneration and entire sanctification. 
The revival had come! 
The prayer of Mary M., ascending for fifteen long 
years, had been heard at last! 


XXIV. 
A MIRACLE OF GRACE. 


N one of our largest cities a man whom we shall eall 
Dunlap led for years the life of a criminal. He had 
a large, muscular body, a great, massive head, and a will 
power bigger than both combined. He was a bold, bad 
man and stopped short of nothing in the accomplish- 
ment of his burglaries, which were usually planned on 
an extensive scale, and seemed to be enjoyed by him 
just in proportion to their danger and difficulty. 

Walls were scaled, doors and windows entered, bolts 
snapped and big iron safes burst open before the crow- 
bar, chisel and dynamite of this fearless individual. 

Policemen had a wholesome dread of the man, and 
never dreamed of attacking him single-handed. Detec- 
tives dogged his steps, and every effort was made to so 
overtake and fasten guilt upon him as to land their vie- 
tim in the penitentiary. But successful as he was fear- 
less, and cunning as he was bold, it was fully ten years 
before the trap was sprung, and Dunlap, caught in one 
of his store robberies, was overpowered by numbers 


and dragged to jail. 
220 


A MIRACLE OF GRACE. Daal 


He had been incarcerated a number of weeks await- 
ing his trial, when one day some godly women who made 
a practice of visiting the prisons in the city on the Sab- 
bath passed his cell and handed him a newspaper con- 
taining D. L. Moody’s sermon on Justification by Faith. 

The prisoner, more from the tediousness of the soli- 
tary confinement than anything else, took up the printed 
sheet and commenced reading. Suddenly his eyes fell 
upon the words that God would forgive the vilest crim- 
inal and foulest sinner on earth if he would simply look 
to and believe on His Son Jesus Christ. Then came 
the Scripture confirming the statement, “Being justified 
by faith, we have peace with God.” 

It would be simply impossible to describe the actual 
shock of astonishment that came over Dunlap as he read 
these words. It was like a lightning flash in his mental 
and spiritual world. The Spirit poured in light on the 
Word, and in the man as he sat reading and rereading 
the transfigured words with a great voiceless wonder in 
heart and mind. 

Though the personages and periods were widely dif- 
ferent and separated as to character and time, yet the 
same thing was taking place in his case that oceurred 
to Luther when climbing up the Sacred Stairway in 
Rome in search after pardon. The reader will remem- 
ber that as the monk was two-thirds up the steps on his 


222 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


knees, the Holy Ghost impressed this passage on 
mind while streaming a flood of light upon it—“The 
just shall live by faith!” 

In an instant Martin Luther saw the truth, grasped 
it, leaped to his feet and rushed down the stairease a ; 
converted man, to electrify the church and Europe with © 
the restored doctrine that men are not saved by works, 
but by faith in the Son of God. 

In a similar manner the light came upon the lonely 
prisoner, and as he read and reread the Bible passage, 
God helping him, he grasped the truth with a thrill of 
amazement, and, looking to Jesus was, in an instant, 
soundly converted to God. 

Of course this made a great stir in the prison, and 
especially outside among the people of God who heard 
of it. Some there were who doubted, but the man’s re- 
markable change in face, conversation, spirit and life 
left no question with the Christian workers who saw him 
that he had been truly regenerated. 

A few weeks after the prisoner’s conversion, under 
the instruction of the Holiness Band who visited the jail, 
he was led into the experience of entire sanctification. 

Here was another miracle of grace, and caused addi- 
tional wonder with some, and increased gladness among 
the people of God. 

As the day for the trial of his case drew near, the 


ak 3, 


A MIRACLE OF GRACE. 223 


conviction was general that the sentence would be for a 
long term in the penitentiary. And because of the 
changed nature of the man this certainty of the coming 
verdict intensified sympathy in his behalf. 

Dunlap had been assigned a lawyer by the judge, and 
this gentleman, conceiving a warm interest in his un- 
fortunate client, gave a faithful study to the case. 

One day he made an important discovery and went 
at once to the jail to interview the prisoner. After tak- 
ing his seat in the cell, he said: 

“Mr. Dunlap, I have made a very important discovery 
in your case which may result in my being able to get 
you off clear.” 

“Indeed,” replied Dunlap. “Iam glad to hear that.” 

“Yes,” resumed the lawyer; “I find that through a 
technical error, as we call it, I can get you free. But 
in order to use my advantage I will have to obtain your 
consent to make a statement that is not exactly in accord 
with facts.” 

“T do not understand you,” replied the prisoner, turn-— 
ing a steady, searching look upon the man of law. 

“T mean,” said his counsel, “that I will have_to get 
you to stretch the truth a little.” 

“Do you mean that I must tell a falsehood?” asked ° 


Dunlap. 


294 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


“Well,” returned the lawyer, “if you eu in put- 
ting it in that strong way, you may do so.’ 

yeas I understand you to say,” ag Dene “tha E 
depends on my telling an untruth—in other words a 
lie ?” 

“Well, yes; that is about the sum of the matter.” 

“Then,” answered Dunlap, “I prefer to go to the pen- s 
itentiary !” B 

If the man’s conversion created surprise, the last oc- 
currence increased the amazement, and Dunlap became ~ : 
a standing wonder among many, while Christians re- B. 
joiced over the steadfastness and faithfulness of the — 
new convert. | 

According to the Bible, it is when a man meets the % = 
conditions that God requires, and turns himself over # 
entirely to the divine keeping, that the Lord works not * 


fy 


only mightily for him on the inside, but achieves mar- 
velously for him on the outside. S 
Without being able to enter into the history of the 
matter, we can only say in the brief compass of this 
chapter that the same God who caused an angel to un- = 
lock the prison doors for Peter did likewise for the sub-— A 
ject of this sketch, and Dunlap after a few months’ in- a 
carceration walked out a pardoned and liberated man. 


He speedily joined the church, secured work down 


A MIRACLE OF GRACE. 225 


in the city, and entered upon a new life in every sense 
of the word. 

There were many, of course, who did not believe in 
him, and suspected a deep trick and scheme underneath 
the whole occurrence. Notably this was the opinion of 
the police and detective force. For years they kept a 
hawk’s eye upon him, and shadowed day and night the 
great burly fellow who with clear, honest eyes and 
bright, happy face, trudged the streets of the city. 

It was not long before Dunlap secured a deputy- 
ship at the Court House. The men there were not sorry 
to obtain the services of an individual of such physical 
_strength and courage; and, having perfect confidence 
in his redeemed life, they entrusted him with large sums 
of money. 

It was especially on these collecting days that the 
police and detectives would watch Dunlap, and he, not 
slow to perceive this, went on his happy, tranquil way, 
saying to a friend: “They don’t know I carry a treasure 
in my heart that all the money of this city is not able 
to buy. I would be a fool indeed to part with what 
I’ve got for the few hundred dollars I gather in my 
collecting tours.” 

As a church member Dunlap was regular in his at- 
tendance, and prompt in payment of money to meet the 


pastoral and conference claims. In addition to this, he 


226 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


would put aside a small amount each month from 
_salary, in order to attend a Holiness Camp Meeting 
that was located about two hundred miles from the city. 
This was his solitary recreation. He said he needed no — 
other, and cared for no other. 

About this time the writer was sent as pastor to the 
church where Dunlap held his membership. One of 
the first things the redeemed man said about the new 
preacher was: 

“Now I need not go off to a camp meeting for soul 
food. God has sent me a Holiness preacher, and I ean 
have full salvation preaching without taking an expen- 
sive trip to hear it. So from this time I will give as an 
extra amount to the church that which I took before to 
pay for my camp meeting trip.” 

After a year’s pastorate the writer was sent from 
the church where he had been stationed to another in 
the same city. In leading a farewell prayer meeting of 
four or five hundred people, he advised them not to fol- 
low him, but remain where they were and stand by 
their new pastor. With a few more concluding words 
of direction and counsel, he sat down. There was a 
profound silence for a few moments, when Dunlap arose 
and, with a voice choked with emotion, said: 

“All may stay here that will, but I am going to 
heaven by way of First Church.” 


A MIRACLE OF GRACE. 227 


The church he alluded to was the charge just given 
to the writer. And here he promptly presented him- 
self on the next Sabbath and was the first accession of 
the seven hundred and fifty who flocked to that place of 
worship as new members. 

One day we were visiting the home of Dunlap, when 
in the course of conversation he said: 

“Would you like to see two photographs of myself 
taken at different times ?”’ 

We replied that we would, when he went to a ward- 
robe and from a drawer within brought out two pic- 
tures. Handing the first one to us he said: 

“This was taken while I was in the service of the 
Devil, and when he had me bound hand and foot.” 

As we looked upon the face on the cardboard we could 
scarcely keep back an expression of disgust. The bloat- 
ed countenance was not only marked heavily with lines 
of sin, but was so grossly animal as to arouse in the 
heart a sense of loathing and in the mind a feeling al- 
most of horror. 

He saw the look, and with a smile laid the other pho- 
tograph before us, saying: 

“This one was taken since I entered the service of 
Christ.” 

As we gazed upon the fine, open, shining face in the 


picture, it fairly staggered faith in one’s own eyesight 


228 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


and judgment to believe that these two portraits were 
of the same man. 

Looking up at Dunlap with an expression of wonder, 
we saw the tears dripping down his face. ; 

With our own eyes wet, and a husky sound in the 
voice we said to the deeply moved man: 

“Brother Dunlap, you could not preach the Gospel 
more powerfully and effectively than to carry these two 
photographs around with you and show them to the 
people. They constitute a Gospel and an unanswerable 
argument in themselves.” 

His reply was: | 

“T have done so many times, and said as I 
showed first one, and then the other, ‘This is what the 
Devil brought me to, and this is what Jesus did for me!’ 
And I have never known it to fail to convict the person 
who heard what I said and looked at the pictures I 
showed him.” 

Dunlap has been dead for several years; but though 
in heaven he still speaks on earth in the memories of 
men. And if recollection of him should perish, the two 
pictures that are left would still proclaim what the 


ee 


Devil does in the way of moral ruin and degradation, 
and what the Son of God can do for the vilest and most 


sinful of men in the way of recovery and full salvation. 


XXV. 
THE LAST WARNING. 


HE Bible, history and observation as well, agree 

as to the facts of warnings being sent to individ- 

uals who were rushing towards and bordering upon de- 

struction. In some instances they were numerous, and 

in others but a single one could be recalled. But whether 

frequent or rare there would necessarily be in each case 

what we call in the caption of this sketch “The Last 
Warning.” 

A Pharaoh is told by Moses that he is receiving his 
final eall to do right from heaven. A Paul brings a fare- 
well message to Felix. An angel stands before Balaam 
with a waving sword. A David with his harp is provi- 
dentially placed before King Saul to divert his mind 
from gloom and his life from ruin. The Christ Him- 
self stands before Pilate as the remaining opportunity 
of that Ruler to decide for the truth and escape the 
destruction which finally came upon him. 

In illustration of the same fact, we see in history a 
person thrusting a note in the hand of Cesar which if 


read would have saved him from the daggers of Casca 
229 


230 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


and Brutus. And could we but know a little part of “ 
this kind of history going on around us, and put it in 
book form, it would be the most profoundly absorbing of 
earthly volumes. 

Of course after dreadful events have taken place, and 
fearful ends have been met, people find it easy to re- 
member certain strange circumstances that transpired 
then, which they now most distinctly remember and 
also recall having remarked upon at the time as a warn- 
ing sent from the other world, ete., ete. 

But leaving the ramblings of these after-date proph- 
ets out, the truth remains that the Almighty in recog- 
nition of the unspeakable value of a human soul, and 
seeing the approaching peril and coming death of that 
being, will work unusually and startlingly to arouse the 
spirit from its carelessness and sinfulness, and save the 
man from present and everlasting disaster. 

It is true that the admission of this very fact opens 
the door to error; and Superstition luxuriates in this 
realm, translating the note of the hovering owl, the 
crow of the cock and the prolonged howl of a dog at 
night into omens of imminent distress and death. But 
leaving out all the creations of fancy, we have such an 
abundance of facts left as to make the most thought- 
less and unconcerned to be burdened and troubled. 

The truth is that a pitiful God does try to save 


THE LAST WARNING. 231 


men who are nearing the grave and a lost world; and 
that this fact also necessarily embraces the other, that 
there comes to all such persons the last one of that 
mystie number of warnings. 

If men who have felt the stirrings of the Spirit could 
but know that at some moment in their lives God was 
moving, resisting. striving and speaking for the last 
time, how full of horror it seems to us they would be. 

We have listened to the deep-toned bell of a great 
steamboat on the Mississippi as first the minutes and 
then the moments of departure drew near. A quarter 
of an hour before leaving there are nine strokes of the 
bell; ten minutes later three; and just at starting one! 
As that last solemn peal rings out, the rope is cast off, 
the plank drawn in, the wheels plunged into the foam- 
ing water, and the boat is gone. In this illustration it 
is to be observed that while the warnings are ample, yet 
they lessen in number as the moment of departure 
draws near. 

The analogy could be strikingly drawn in the case 
of the doomed man. The calls from heaven and earth 
have not been lacking; but their decreasing number and 
power is the alarming feature of the case. 

When a man is beheld rushing upon a great, unseen 
peril, it is a human custom to multiply shouts and cries 


accompanied with unlimited wavings of hands and sig- 


232 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


nals of danger. On the part of Heaven it is just the 
other way. The number of calls and efforts to save seem 
to lessen like the bell tolling nine, then three, and the 
final melancholy knell-like one. 

They also decrease in power. This last fact arises 
from the blunting and deadening of spiritual sensibility 
through long resistance to the voice, touch, and actual 
strugglings of the Spirit. The man by his own acts has 
put himself where he cannot hear the message, feel the 
hand, or recognize the divine effort in his behalf. 

A person near him says something about the Ides of 
March, but he does not understand. The note is thrust 
into his hand to remain unread. People near him speak 
of somebody being in great danger; he wonders who 
they are talking about. In a Gospel meeting he has a 
dim consciousness of a preacher saying something about 
the Dead Line in the Bible, and God’s last eall. But he 
does not know who he is talking about, and the faint 
impression soon passes away. 

And yet when the minister was uttering the sentence 
so meaningless and idle to him, the last toll of the bell 
was being sounded. Another Moses had said thou shalt 
hear from God no more, and had left a hardened man to 
a coming destruction which was to be as sudden and 
overwhelming as the Red Sea was to the king of Egypt. 

One of these occurrences remains with the writer as 


THE LAST WARNING. 933 


vividly to-day as at the time of its happening a number 
of years ago. 

The closing service of a certain camp meeting had 
arrived. The audience was large, and the preacher of 
the evening was delivering a sermon of wonderful 
solemnity and heart-searching power. The writer sat 
on the platform with other ministers, in a great spirit 
travail that God would bless the closing appeal and save 
many souls. 

To this hour he recalls the stillness of that summer 
night, the glimmering of the stars through the trees, the 
song of the katydids in the woods, and the voice of the 
preacher as he plead with sinners to be saved. Those 
sights and sounds have become strangely interblended 
and associated, forming together a picture never to be 
forgotten of that memorable night. 

In the congregation sat a young man who gave less 
attention than any one else to what was being said from 
the pulpit, and yet he of all others should have drunk in 
every word of the sermon, and acted more promptly on 
the invitation to come at once to Christ, because he was 
receiving his last warning. Could he but have known 
that in less than two hours he would be millions of miles 
away in a distant world, lost and forever undone, how 


he would have stopped the preacher by cries of agony 


234 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES, — 


as he fell backward in his seat, or down upon his face 
at the altar. 

But the Ides had come and he did not know it. The 
bell was tolling one, and he did not hear it. With per- 
sistent attempt to disturb the worship and draw others 
away with himself into misdoing, he whispered, 
laughed, or gazed vacantly at the man of God in the 
pulpit. 

Meantime the few minutes left him on earth were 
fast passing away; and now as the preacher coneluded 
his discourse, only a short hour intervened between him 
and the end of his probation on earth forever. Just a 
little way up the future, not quite sixty minutes; and 
now as the hymn ended only fifty; and as the prayer 
ceased, exactly forty, a corpse was lying outstretched on 
the ground two miles from the campground with a bullet 
hole in the forehead, and that death wound made all 
unwittingly by the hand of a friend. If he could have 
bent over and peered into the face of the motionless 
form before him, he would have discovered to his horror 
that the dead man lying there under the stars was him- 
self. 

In perfect harmony with what has been written in 
this sketch comes another occurrence of kindred nature 
which transpired in a Southern State. We give it as 
related by a Methodist preacher. 


THE LAST WARNING. 235 


There lived in a town where he was stationed as pas- 
tor a physician who was a moral blight to the com- 
munity by reason of his skeptical views and sinful life. 
His influence was especially baneful among the young 
men, some of whom he led to embrace infidelity, and a 
greater number to become openly and _ shamelessly 
wicked. : 

One Sabbath morning the preacher felt deeply im- 
pressed to preach from Proverbs 29:1: “He that being 
- often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be 
destroyed, and that without remedy.” His subject was 
the swift and terrible judgments of God upon those who 
resisted His calls and warnings. 

While opening up his discourse and in the act of 
glancing over the audience he was profoundly surprised 
to see the infidel doctor sitting in the congregation. 
No one had ever beheld him, or even heard of his at- 
tending a church before. So there was not only genuine 
wonder with the pastor, but among the people at the 
man’s presence among them. 

When first observed he was about two-thirds of the 
way back towards the door, and in the following peculiar 
position: His body was bent forward with his chin 
resting on his hands that were folded one on top of the 
other, and laid on the edge of the bench immediately in 
front of him. He had raven hair, a heavy mustache of 


236 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


the same color, and coal black eyes which he fixed stead- | 
ily upon the minister in the pulpit. As the preacher 
proceeded with his discourse, enlarging upon the calami- 
ties that befell men who strove with and against God, 
the big mustache would curl and the teeth gleam for a 
moment under the incredulous smile of the infidel. The 
whole mocking face seemed to say, “Do you think you 
can frighten me with that kind of talk? Do you imag-— 
ine for a moment that I believe what you are saying?” 

The preacher said that he could scarcely go on with 
his sermon, the man’s appearance was so infernal, and 
his presence so paralyzing. He added that he never 
looked into a countenance that seemed so Satanic. The 
horrible thought took possession of him and could not be 
shaken off that the Devil was in the man and looking 
at him through his eyes, and mocking him through his 
hell-surrendered countenance. 

To all appearance the preacher was the more troubled 
of the two, and the skeptic was having the best of the 
situation so far as mental burden and spiritual distress 
were concerned. And yet at the same time, and all un- 
conscious of the fact, the doctor was hearing his last 
warning; and he was receiving it from the lips of the 
very man whom he was jeering at in his heart, and 
scorning with every line of his sinister face and posi- 
tion of the defiant body. . 


THE LAST WARNING. 237 


When the sermon was finished, the doctor walked out 
of the church, mounted his horse and rode away. Mean- 
time the congregation scattered to their homes, while a 
few of the stewards remained standing by the door 
conversing with the pastor. 

While thus engaged, suddenly the sharp report of a 
rifle or pistol rang out on the air from some point sey- 
eral hundred yards distant down the road. All were 
surprised at the sound and commented on its unusual- 
ness on a Sabbath morning and near a quiet country 
town like their own. They had, however, dismissed 
the thought, and were speaking of some church matter 
of common interest, when they saw a man running up 
the road towards them and crying out, “The Doctor’s 
killed! The Doctor’s killed!” 

Hurrying back with him they found the physician’s 
horse browsing on the grass, and close by, lying stone 
dead on the ground was the doctor with his face up- 
turned to the sky, his black eyes wide open and staring 
aloft, as if he was watching the flight of his lost soul as 
it sped on its way to the Judgment Bar of that God 
whom he had resisted and grieved and insulted up to 
the last hour of his life. 

A bullet shot from a thicket had entered the back 
of the skull and came out through the forehead, pro- 


238 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


ducing instant death. The victim evidently did not see 
his murderer, nor is he known until this day. 

The man led a wicked life, and died as he lived, 
just as most people do, according to the Bible and his- 
tory, and our own observation. What possessed him to 
visit the church that Sabbath no one ever knew. His 
contemptuous face and manner showed that it was for 
no good. 

The last passage from the Bible ever read and re- 
peated in his presence, was, “He that being often re- 
proved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, 
and that without remedy.” His death warrant and 
doom were read in his hearing and he did not know 
it. He crossed the Dead line and did not realize it. 
The last warning had come, been delivered, tarried and 
gone; and he to whom it was sent, was oblivious of its 
arrival and ignorant of its departure. The bell which 
had sounded nine times in his youth, and three times 
in his manhood, now tolled its final melancholy note 


of one, and the man arose, and went forth according to 


the words of the Book he despised, to a death that was ~ 


sudden and to a destruction without remedy. 


: 


hn 


XXVI. 
THE UPWARD LOOK. 


E do not know the exact location of the soul 
in the body, but we are perfectly convinced 
that it is there. Especially is the thoughtful observer 
impressed with its nearness to or intimate connection 
with the face. By an invisible network of spiritual 
ropes, cords, wires, rods, wheels, cranks and pulleys, the 
soul from within operates the facial machinery, declar- 
ing not only its presence, but signaling by every straight 
eurved or quivering line in the countenance, and every 
changing light and shadow, and every shifting expres- 
sion on brow and lip, and in the eye, the whole inner 
life of the spirit, with past regret, present determina- 
tion and future intention, so that no manuscript reads 
clearer, and no book presents plainer print. 

It is this strange phenomenon, which after all is noth- 
ing but the working of law, that the impostor, deceiver 
and sinner in general has to continually plan for and 
guard against. It is this that the statesman and pol- 
itician has to meet with artificial methods, the manu- 


facture of a false face and the thorough schooling of the 
239 


240 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


betraying eye and tongue. And it is this same tell tale 
face that good people have to subdue and train to keep 
concealed private griefs and sacred histories which the 
public has no right to know. ; 

In this countenance volume we have noticed three 
distinct looks that could be called the upward, the 
downward and the straightforward. The downward 
gaze is the peculiar property of sin. A guilty soul 
draws the head earthward. All of us have felt it who 
have sinned, and marked it in others who had and were 
transgressing. It is the common attitude in the erim- 
inal dock, and always takes place when a man has crime 
fastened upon him in the presence of others. The face 
in obedience to law is hidden by the hand or bowed be- 
fore the shocked scrutiny of an assembly. 

The straightforward look belongs to the innocent, 
honest and honorable character. It meets a fellow 
creature’s eyes, firmly, calmly and kindly, in perfect 
consciousness of having done no wrong to the one before 
him. It is remarkable what convincing power is in this 
quiet, gentle, steady look. 

The upward glance is the peculiar property of the 
heart cleansed by the power of God. In the prayer of 
the true worshipper it is felt to be the natural attitude; 
in soul rapture it is the invariable position; while in 


THE UPWARD LOOK. 941 


books and on the canvas the pictures of the saints al- 
ways show them with the heaven bent gaze. 

In the painting representing the Temptation, the 
artist has caught this idea, and while the countenance 
of Satan is lowered, the face of Christ is uplifted. 

We have been repeatedly struck with the sacredness 
of this moral realm, as indicated by the face and eyes. 
It belongs to the spiritually clean. No other people 
ean live in this country. One has to possess the char- 
acter to abide there. A man may attempt it, but has 
to emigrate in a hurry if he has not been divinely 
cleansed. 

We have seen the man with the downward face, in- 
vade the straightforward look region, in an attempt to 
bluster, bluff and deceive the people with his brazen 
forehead and bold, staring, defiant gaze; but we have 
never known one of this order to attempt the upward 
look. 

We have observed another class of people endeavoring - 
to cast the upward glance of silent worship, rapt con- 
templation and soul ecstacy, but as they say in the 
musical and oratorical world, it fell flat, and only cre- 
ated amusement. The upward look is not a belonging 
of the merely correct and moral man; it is part of the 
estate of the person and character who has met God, 
been forgiven of every sin, and thrilled with the gift 


249 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


of a heart made new and elean by the blood of Jesus” 


Christ and the power of the Holy Ghost. 

It is very evident, then, that excellent as is the 
straight vision, the upward contemplation is the better. 
The first declares proper relations with earth, but the 
second reveals a perfect adjustment and harmony with 
heaven. The one may stand for common honor and 
honesty, while the second is the sign of redemption and 
purity. One means clean hands, and the other a clean 
soul. With this light on it, we can understand what 
was in the mind and heart of a woman we once heard 
testify in a private circle. She said, “For two years 
since obtaining a clean heart I have felt a continual 
desire to look upward. I am willing for God to know 
every thought and desire of my life. My inmost soul 
is always open to Him; and many times each day I find 
myself looking up to Him, with a joy and exultation 
that I have no words to describe.” 

Of course we do not mean to say that the upward 
glance exists independently of the other. It necessarily 
includes the other. It is from the first, through the 
second, that we reach the third. A man must get right 
with his brother or fellow creature, before he can find 
harmony with God. Many in the very act of rectifying 
matters on the human and earthly side, are fairly 


-- oi" 


{Agee 


TIIE UPWARD LOOK. QA3 


electrified with an instantaneous and unspeakably glor- 
ious adjustment on the divine and heavenly side. 

In illustration of the leading thought of this sketch 
we give the following incident which took place in the 
city where the writer resides: 

Among the ten or twelve Methodist pastors located in 
the metropolis, was one who was greatly given to pas- 
toral work. His great victories were not in the pulpit, 
but about the firesides, and in the stores and shops of 
his parishioners. 

In the membership of Brother L. was a devoted 
Christian woman, married to a man in the liquor busi- 
ness. Her husband’s occupation was a source not only 
of profound mortification to her, but agony as well, as 
she thought of the harm he was doing to the community 
and the danger he himself was in, before God. 

Hoping to influence him for good, she persuaded a 
pastor who preceded L. to take her husband into the 
church. And there the new preacher found him, an 
unsaved man himself, and a stumbling stone to many 
others. 

L. was too wise a preacher to publicly expose and 
lash an individual in the audience, especially in view of 
the history of the case. He felt he needed some ground 
to stand on to accomplish what he desired; and praying 


much for divine guidance, swept quickly through mere 


244 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


acquaintanceship into friendly and kindly relations 
with the man whose soul he was after. 

As it happened,in a few weeks L.’s family went away 
on a visit for a month, and naturally the pastor re- 
ceived invitations from his members to eat and sleep 
at their different homes. The one he was burning to 
obtain came toward the last, and was cordially ac- 
cepted. He was to take supper and breakfast and spend 
the night at a place he was sorely needed. 

The man of God was much on his knees all the after- 
noon that preceded that important visit, where not only 
a soul but souls were at stake. Of course the trans- 
gressor and church law breaker could be tried and 
promptly cast out from the membership, and this would 
have to be done if his plan failed. But the preacher’s 
heart sank at the thought that even this proceeding, 
right as it was, would mean a lost soul, and the liquor 
business still going on, and numbers of men falling into 
hell as a consequence of the continued traffic. Oh, if 
God would be gracious to him, and anoint his lips, and 
bless his very manner, and help him to order his case, 
that the Devil might be defeated, a crushing life burden 
lifted from a woman’s heart, a man’s feet plucked from 
the brink of hell and a great victory won for Heaven 
that would bless not only one family but scores and 


THE UPWARD LOOK. QA5 


hundreds of others! This was the man’s constant 
thought, and equally frequent heart ery and prayer. 

It would be difficult to describe that social and pas- 
toral visit combined. Taught and helped by God, the 
preacher made great advances into the esteem and 
affection of both husband and wife. 

After supper was over, and sitting in the pleasant 
library the painful subject of the man’s business was 
brought up so naturally and easily that no one could tell 
how it had been effected. At once the host took the 
alarm and threw up his fortifications with the old time 
worn excuses, and arguments of sophistry; but the 
guest with quiet manner, gentle voice, heart all warm 
with the Holy Spirit, and brain and tongue alert and 
touched of Heaven, levelled every breastwork, spiked 
every gun, got possession of the flag and quietly sur- 
rounded the silenced enemy. 

With a husky voice and eyes filled with tears the 
preacher added: 

“There is something more about the case that I have 
not yet referred to; and it is bound to come close to 
your heart, for it will affect the welfare and happiness 
of those who are nearest and dearest to you. Do you 
know, my brother, that the Bible says ‘Woe to the man 
who putteth the bottle to his neighbors’ lips.’. This woe 
is certain to come, for all God’s warnings and threats 


246 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


take place. His word never fails. The ‘woe’ spoken 
of in the Scripture may fall upon you, or upon your 
family. If it comes on you, it will crush them; and if 
it overtakes them, that will crush you. In either case 
you are doomed. Then above all remember that you 
are diametrically opposed in your life and business, to— 
the work and business of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. — 
He is trying to save men, and you are endeavoring to 
ruin and damn them.” 
* * * * % 

The house in which the preacher was entertained 
was a three-story brick dwelling. The first floor was 
devoted to the liquor traffic, mainly a wholesale busi- 
ness; the second consisted of parlor, sitting room, din- 
ing room and bed chambers, while the guest was given 
an apartment in the third story looking out upon the 
street. 

With heart all stirred and brain fired by the con- 
versation and scenes in the library, the preacher after 
retiring found it impossible to sleep. He tossed and 
turned an hundred times, but unable to compose him- 
self to slumber listened hour after hour to the striking 
of distant town clocks. 

More than once through the night he imagined he 
heard strange rumbling sounds in the house, but dis- 


THE UPWARD LOOK. QAT 


missed the thought as a fancy and continued his rest- 
less exercise. 

Just before day, however, he was so certain that he 
heard a jarring sound on the pavement, and that some- 
thing unusual was taking place in or from the build- 
ing, that he arose and glancing downward through the 
closed blinds of his window, beheld to his amazement 
several long rows of whisky barrels ranged on the brick 
walk and in the street immediately in front of the 
store. As he stood wondering at the sight he saw his 
host appear at the door with still another cask which 
he rolled into line with the rest. After this he dis- 
appeared and was gone several minutes, when he re- 
turned with an axe in his hand, and took his station 
at the head of one of the lines of barrels. 

The starlight had that indistinctness peculiar to the 
coming of the day, but still every attitude and motion 
of the man was plainly discernible by the preacher. 

Suddenly he saw him raise the axe and with a tre- 
mendous blow stove in the head of the first barrel, when 
with a great g-u-s-h, the red whisky poured over the 
pavement, ran into the gutter and flowed away in the 
direction of the river. Stepping up to the second cask, 
the axe again rose and fell, a second barrel head crashed 
in and sixty more gallons of the crimson liquid of hell 


which impoverishes and beggarizes the household, breaks 


248 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


the hearts of women, bruises the bodies of innocent 
children and damns the souls of men, went on its rush- 
ing way through the ditch towards the Mississippi. 

The man never hesitated, but went on smashing cask 
after cask, until five thousand dollars, every cent of his 
stock in trade, had poured into the gutter, and swirled 
and swept on its way through the street to the river. 

Day was breaking in the East when the man com- 
pleted his work, and day.was breaking in him at the 
same time. He stood leaning on his axe contemplating 
the scene of havoc before him, ignorant that he himself 
was being beheld and rejoiced over from the third win- 
dow. Then there was still another window, much 
higher, and opening from Heaven itself, that we feel 
convinced was crowded with angelic and redeemed 
faces looking on in joy at a man who impoverished him- 
self for the truth’s sake, and became poor that he might 
get right and rich with God. 

He stood still for a full minute as if studying his 
own work, and then looked up to the sky! The light 
was in the East, and a brighter light was in his face. 
Pardon and peace had come to him when he struck the 
last blow on the last barrel; and now for the first time 
in his life he could give the upward gaze to Heaven, 
assured that it was received, and thrilled with the con- 
sciousness that it was returned by Him who dwelt in 


THE UPWARD LOOK. QA9 


the sky. It had cost him all that he possessed to obtain 
the upward look, but judging from the happiness that 
was beaming in the man’s face, he had come out gainer 
in the transaction beyond figures in arithmetic to com- 
pute and words in any language to describe. 

May God in His mercy, grant us all the power, to 
east The Upward Look. 


Be acs a 


Ya 


XXVII. 
THE POWER OF A DREAM. 


UST how and why dreams come is one of the mys- 
teries of life. About the time we conelude that 

they are a projection of one’s waking thoughts, comes a 
midnight vision of the most unique and fantastic pat- 
tern, and dealing with things that we never thought of 
before nor had. concerning them the faintest imagina- 
tion. There is also a difference of opinion as to their 
moral value. Some may be sent by God; while with 
others He unquestionably has nothing to do. In the old- 
en days the Lord evidently made use of dreams for the 
comfort, direction,and deliverance of His people. In the 
present time with an open Bible in the hand, and the 
recognized leadings of the Holy Spirit in the life, we 
do not need these strange flitting mental pictures of 
the night to show us our duty, privilege or danger, as 
was done to men in an earlier dispensation that was 
far less favored than ours. Nevertheless there are 
times when the ordinary means of grace seem utterly to 
fail with certain individuals, and Heaven in its efforts 


to arouse and save the immortal soul, is driven to the 
250 


*¢ 


THE POWER OF A DREAM. Q51 


employment of methods unusual and extraordinary. So 
we doubt not that there are dreams sent as directly to 
the slumberer on the bed, as a sermon to the sleeping 
conscience in the pew, or as a prophet has been directed 
to a sinful city, with a message of warning or woe. 

In harmony with this thought, we recall the exper- 
iences related in our hearing of three preachers who are 
as widely removed in temperament as they are in the 
localities where they reside. 

One of these men was greatly gifted in speech, pos- 
sessed charming’ manners, and became a kind of pulpit 
and social idol with his congregation. The incense 
burned continually to him, intoxicated his brain, drove 
the grace out of his heart and finally ascended like a 
fog around a backslider with a clergyman’s coat on his 
back and a shining beaver hat on his head. At the very 
time his gold chain was glittering most, his rattan 
whirling gracefully in the air, and his people were high- 
est in their praises of him, he was without Christ and 
Ichabod was written on the walls of his soul. 

To this man, God sent a dream of the Judgment Day. 
As he lay one night locked in slumber on his pillow 
he beheld the world on fire, the rolling flames towering 
above the clouds, while he heard frantic stricken mul- 
titudes crying out, “The Judgment Day has come! The 
Judgment Day has come!” 


252 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


At this moment in his sleep he seemed to lift up his 
eyes and see the Son cf God descending through the 
Heavens. In his agony he ran, so that the Saviour’s 
face might be turned upon him, and to his amazement 
the Lord averted His countenance. Rushing around in 
that direction to his unspeakable consternation Christ 
turned His face from him the second time; and this 
was repeated again with such an unmistakeable expres- 
sion of ‘displeasure, that the preacher woke up with his 
face wet with tears, sobbing, “He won’t look at me! 
He won’t look at me!” 

That vision brought the gifted man down in deepest 
humiliation, penitence and prayer before God. He was 
heard in Heaven in that he feared, and the restored 
servant of Christ has been blazing in a skyward way 
ever since, 

A second ministerial friend of the writer admitted 
publicly that in the active life of a pastor, preaching, 
visiting and flying around generally, he lost God. He 
continued to go on his rounds, baptized the children, 
married the people, delivered his sermons, made his 
announcements and took up the conference collections ; 
but for all that he was a backslider. A dead man was 
in the pulpit talking to dead men in the pews. A corpse 
was driving a loaded hearse to the cemetery. 


At this juncture came the dream. The vision showed 


THE POWER OF A DREAM. 953 


‘him to be in Hell. He was rolling in agony amid bil- 
lows of torturing fire. With fearful struggles he 
struck out for a shore which he saw in the distance. 
As he came nearer he beheld his mother standing on the 
bank gazing with anguish upon him as though she would 
help her gasping, laboring son out of his torment. Just 
as he reached the strand, and stretched forth his hand 
to pull himself upon the shore, the Devil suddenly ap- 
peared, coming over the bank, with a look of infernal 
joy and malicious triumph. He whirled a whip of 
fire in his hand, the lash of which seemed to be a mile 
long, curling and flickering like a streak of lightning. 
He brought it down upon the unhappy man with a 
sharp detonating crack, and the keen quivering lash 
seemed to penetrate body and soul alike with an agony 
beyond any words to describe. With an awful groan 
he fell back in the billows of flame, hearing the Devil’s 


shout of victory, and the broken hearted wail of his 
mother, as she cried “My poor boy”! “My poor boy”! 

This dreadful experience was gone through with three 
times; when the mental distress, and the actual suffer- 
ing of body became so great through the vivid, life-like 
dream, that the preacher burst through the gates of 
slumber with a piercing cry to God for help and mercy, 
and fell with sobs and tears, face downward, upon the 


floor. 


254 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


Today he is one of the holiest men known to the 
writer, 

The third instance is that of a preacher who after 
years of diligent, faithful service in the Christian life, 
began gradually to grow weary of its constant cross 
bearing and self-denial. The joy once realized in endur- 
ing the hardness of a good soldier of Jesus Christ sub- 
sided. The flesh cried out for a letting up, or for more in- 
dulgence ; while strange inner voices called attention to 
the drudgery of the work, the prevalence of the com- 
monplace, the uninteresting class of people with whom 
he labored, and the many instances of fruitless, result- 
less toil among them as far as human eye could per- 
ceive, and human wisdom judge. With all this came 
fierce temptations to downright fleshliness; when sud- 
denly one night he dreamed a dream. 

He seemed to be in the outskirts of a large field in 
what is called a “deadening.” Although asleep he 
thought in his slumber that he had just awakened and 
found himself lying on the ground and completely sur- 
rounded by what seemed to be logs. Some were, and 
some were not; for as he gazed upon the objects he saw 
that a number had an almost imperceptible motion like 
that of aworm. What he had taken for fallen trees were 
huge creatures eight to ten feet long, shaped somewhat 
like snails, with broad bands of yellow and dusky red 


THE POWER OF A DREAM. 255 


around their bodies. Some were lying on tree trunks 
not much larger than themselves, and others were 
stretched on the ground. Most of them were asleep, 
and but for a slight palpitation of the side would have 
looked to be dead. A few seemed to be making efforts 
to arouse themselves as shown in quivering eyelid and 
lazy stretching of muscle. One had opened his great 
flabby mouth in a yawn which disclosed a crimson 
cavity down which a man could easily have disappeared. 
Others were awake and had a slow vermicular motion 
toward the preacher that was simply horrifying in its 
deliberateness. In addition, the eyes of all the awak- 
ened ones were resting on the unhappy man who, 
paralyzed with fear, lay helpless in their midst. The 
moral horror and spiritual loathing felt in the vision, 
surpassed the physical terror realized in the case of 
nightmare. The spectacle of a creeping, crawling flesh- 
liness, with no mind in its dull eyes, no heart or soul 
in its gross form, but a mere shape of the lowest plane 
of physical life, moving toward him with an enswathe- 
ment and accompaniment of fat and oiliness, of lazi- 
ness, sleepiness and stupiduess, so terrified the slumber- 
ing minister, that he cried out in agony. He awoke 
with a staring eyed, open mouthed horror, to find his 
face bathed in a cold clammy sweat, and his body trem- 
bling as with an ague. 


256 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


He felt as he collected his faculties and tried to 
think, that God had caused him to look on symbolized 
materialism; on the carnal mind incarnated. He was 
convinced that he had been shown in a terrible picture 
the trend and end of the soul which turns from God, 
truth, and spiritual things to walk in gross and fleshly 
lines. That a spirit finally animalized becomes as un- 
like a man, as a fallen devil fails to resemble one of 
God’s holy angels. 

The shock that night was terrific, but something of 
the kind was needed. 

Suffice it to say that the dream accomplished that 
whereunto it was sent; a delusion was swept away; a 
faltering soul was steadied; and the adversary exposed, 
foiled, discomfited and defeated once more by the Son 
of God. 

So in the three instances related God accomplished a 
wonderful work through a vision of the night. Recoy- 
ery and salvation was the result in each case. 

Of course it is easy to criticise these incidents and 
say they are too realistic, that they are nerve shocking, 
and also offensive to the best taste. Complaint also 
might be made that the imagery used is too gross for 
the proper description of spiritual states, and utterly 
inadequate to depict conditions in another world that 
is so different from anything we know in life. 


THE POWER OF A DREAM. O54 


In reply we ask what figures and images have we 
used that are not also found in the Bible. There we 
read of the Lake of Fire, of unquenchable flames, of 
undying worms, of a being who has become a dragon, 
of a worldliness that has become a beast, of weeping, 
wailing and gnashing of teeth, of Christ coming in the 
clouds, of the world being on fire, of a bottomless pit, 
and all enthroned in Hell, a tormenting Devil. 

As for dreams, far more wonderful ones than the 
three we have related are recorded in the Word of God. 
So all these objections viewed in the light of Scripture 
alone, are found to go down. 

Then let it be remembered that this life sketch was 
not written to defend dreams nor even to explain them. 
The chapter appears simply to relate three remarkable 
occurrences; how a preacher was getting off the nar- 
row upon the broad way that leads to death; and how 
two others were off entirely and heading rapidly for 
ruin; when God sent the visions as described and saved 
the three men. The only point we make is that the 


dreams came, and the men were saved. 


XXVIII. 


_A NIGHT VISITOR. — 


HE preacher had slipped away by a s 


him for his sermons, and bidding him fare 
had regained his room, and, flushed and grat 
the pleasent things that her been said to him t 


dash off a letter to a certain religious paper 
posit it in a letter-box before the last round of 
collector. So, drawing up a small table, and 
hat tilted backward on his head, he wrote the foll 
lines with flying pen: _ 


_ “Mr. Editor: 
“At the meeting previous to this last one, j 
to-night, I had wonderful victory. It wasa ia A 
but I poured in Sinai shot and shell after the 
manner and things went all to pieces. On the fi 


the opposition melted like mists before the mot 
258 


A NIGHT VISITOR. 259 


and the whole community was stirred from center to cir- 
cumference and went down before the Great Flood of 
Salvation. 

“From that place I came to this city of three hun- 
dred thousand inhabitants. Immediately upon my ar- 
rival I saw that the holiness professed here was of the 
sloppiest character; so I went for everything in sight, 
and preached the straight truth. As a result, on the 
fifth day the people got their eyes opened for the first 
time, and began to sweep into genuine holiness. Other 
great teachers and preachers had been here, but nothing 
has ever been seen like my meeting. 

“The building in which the meetings were held was 
crowded to suffocation ; thousands of people were in our 
street services and could not get into the hall where we 
held forth. The scenes around the altar defied descrip- 
tion. Gales of Glory, Tornadoes of Power, Johnstown 
Floods, Waterspouts and a Noah’s Deluge of Salvation 
swept the audience, while perfect Cyclones of Convie- 
tion fell on the people at every service. Lawyers, doc- 
tors. merchants, editors, professors and members of the 
Legislature and of Congress swept with shouts and 
eries into the Fountain. The whole city was stirred! 
The oldest inhabitants say they never witnessed such 
a revival. 

“Men raged, and the opposition was intense. But 
everything went down before us. The Devil was sent 
howling back to Hell. Eternity alone can reveal the 
good that was done in this meeting. 

“Hundreds were at the altar. Great numbers swept 


260 REMARKABLE OCCURR 


into the Fountain, and it is safe to say 
if not thousands, were turned from the doo 
get in. Hundreds followed me to the train, a mn 
me to come again. If I can, I will. 


you from that point. Pray for me. 
“Your humble brother, 
“A. Brows 


The letter’ was folded and addressed, and B 
Blohart, stepping quickly out, dropped it in a letter- 
box in front of the hotel, letting the iron lid s 
twice to be sure that the valuable document was ins 
and safe. 
Returning to his room, after leaving orders at 
office to be called at 6 o’clock for the early train ; 
preacher packed his valise, disrobed himself, and, i 
getting to pray, flung himself upon the bed and yught C 
sleep. 


Thought was on fire; the brain cells were surel 
with blood ; faces, voices, speeches, handclasps, fla 


A NIGHT VISITOR. 261 


were so vivid that he was kept awake looking at them. 
He wanted to go to sleep and didn’t want to go. And 
so he tossed on, sometimes smiling in the dark as words 
of praise came back to him, and sometimes sighing as 
an uneasy, troubled feeling touched his spirit. 

Twelve o’clock had long ago sounded, and the last 
wheel of belated carriage and wagon had ceased to 
echo from the deserted street. Now and then only, the 
distant stroke of the policeman’s club, as it descended 
with ringing sound upon the pavement, fell upon his 
ear. The city was asleep. The people who had flat- 
tered him were locked in slumber and had long ago for- 
gotten him, and yet here he was, brooding upon their 
fulsome utterances. 

The hour of one struck from a remote town clock. 
How solemnly it sounded! A change already seemed 
to have taken place in the Past. The scenes of the 
evening had been gone over so frequently in his mind 
that they were beginning to pall upon him. He feit 
something akin to disgust creeping in his heart. Then 
that solitary note of the bell sounded so strangely like 
a knell. His room seemed to hold the echo for a full 
minute, and then became silent and oppressive, like a 
tomb. The sensation was like to the feeling which 
comes over one when a funeral procession has swept 


past and left the street deserted. 


262 REMARKABLE OCCURREN 


fear he glanced up and saw a chyondelll Form s 
at the foot of his bed and obviously looking 


“Tyo you know me?” 


asked the Figure. 
“Yes,” replied the man of God, in a a 
“T have come to have a talk with you.” - 
The preacher was silent, and his heart sak 
him. 
“T have been waiting quite a while until you 
recover from your excitement, become quiet and 


to me. God has sent me, and I have a message 


thoughtless people to-night; but it will be more 
able.” . 


“You mailed a letter to-night to a Holiness fp 
and you wrote it as a Holiness man?” 
COV ag. 

“What made you tell those untruths in it ?” £ 
(Profound silence in the room and on the 


“You said in that letter that you came fro 


2 


A NIGHT VISITOR. 263 


where the opposition melted like mists before the morn- 
ing sun, and the place was shaken from center to cir- 
eumference. Now answer me as God’s representative, 
what were the results of your whole meeting ?” 
No reply. 
“Answer me, as you will have to do at the Day of 
Judgment ?” 
“Two young people were reclaimed,” replied the 
evangelist, in an almost inaudible whisper. 
“And yet you wrote as though a mighty revival had 
visited the town!” 
No word from the bed. 
The White Figure looked steadily at the prostrate 
man for quite a while and resumed: 
“You wrote to-night that on coming to this city, of 
three hundred thousand inhabitants, you discovered 
on the very first day that the Holiness professed here 
was of the sloppiest character. How was it possible 
for you to know such a thing as that on the first day, 
unless you were God himself?” 
No answer. 
. “You wrote that the hall was crowded to suffocation. 
How many people could it accommodate 2” 

Continued silence. 

“Answer me; you know I have the power to make 


you admit the truth, and truth is what I want to-night. 


264 REMARKABLE OCCUR 


How many people could be accommodat 
“Two hundred.” a 
“And yet you conveyed in your letter the 

great audience was listening to you.” 
“T feel that I did wrong,” said the pre; 


Did you count them?” 
So.” 
“Do you know that it is the rarest thing fo 

ligious street meeting to number over two hundred pe 

sons ?”” - 

More silence. a, 

“You stated most confidently that the who 


stirred by your meeting. That is, that a great 


person in two hundred or five hundred knew jy 
there.” 


utterances.” 
The Figure looked steadily at the man befo 
for a while, and said: 
“God will have to forgive you for the — 


show you where your letter was false. 
me to speak with you about it.” 
Some heavy sighs came from the bed. 


A NIGHT VISITOR. 265 


- “Who was that oldest inhabitant that said your 
meeting was the greatest ever held in that city ?” 

“Several of the brethren told me they thought so.” 

“Were they the oldest inhabitants?” 

pio.” 

“So you lied again ?” 

An awful groan from the bed. 

“Did you witness the Johnstown flood ?” 

CONT .?7 

“Were you ever in a real cyclone ?” 

pa.” 

“Of course you have some idea of the awful and 
widespread power of the things you mentioned in your ~ 
letter as Gales, Tornadoes and Deluges ?” 

“T have read about them.” 

“You wrote that you had just such things in spirit- 
ual lines in your meeting; that God worked on such 
seales and grades of omnipotence.” 

A profound silence. 

“In the Johnstown flood,” continued the Figure, 
“thousands were killed, millions of property swept 
away, and the civilized world was moved at the occur- 
rence. At the Deluge the entire Human Race was de- 
stroyed with the exception of a single family. And 
yet you said you’had a Johnstown Flood and a Noah’s 


Deluge in your meeting.” 


266 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


A heavy sigh from the bed. 

“How many people were really saved and sanctified 
in this last meeting? Answer me as you will have to 
answer God at the last Day.” 

The preacher turned restlessly. 

“T am waiting,” said the Form; “tell me the num- 
ber that you think in your heart were really saved ?” 

“Between thirty and forty.” 

“And yet you wrote that hundreds were at the altar, 
and that great numbers swept into the Fountain of 
Cleansing.” 

More tossing on the bed. 

“You spoke of the Devil being sent howling back to 
Hell; did you hear him howl?” 

Profound silence. 

“Did you ever hear him howl ?” 

No word of reply. 

“You wrote about Hell raging against you, and the 
human opposition being so intense. Who opposed 
you ?” 

No answer. 

“Did the city authorities stop your meeting ?” 

“Now 

“Did the church forbid you?” 

“No.” 


“Did the press say anything against you?” 


A NIGHT VISITOR. 267 


“The papers ignored us.” 

“Did any one in the audience cry out against you, 
and mobs break up your services ?” 

= 

“Well, where was the ‘intense opposition’ you wrote 
about ?” 

“Several people were overheard talking on the 
street, saying they did not believe in sanctification 
and others laughed at my mannerisms, as they called 
my style of preaching.” 

“But your mannerisms are not Holiness.” 

“No, but another man said that such loud, noisy 
meetings ought to be stopped.” 

“Ts that all?” 

“Y—e—s.” 

“Do you call that intense opposition ?” 

No reply. 

“Do you know what they did to Paul ?” 

“They scourged and stoned him.” 

“Do you remember what the people did to Wesley ?” 

“They frequently stoned and mobbed him.” 

“What did the people do to Christ?” 

' “They killed him.” 

“What is there to compare between their sufferings 

and yours?” 


268 REMARKABLE OCCURRENCES. 


“Nothing—absolutely nothing,” groaned the man on 
the bed. 

“One striking difference was that hundreds, you say, 
went to the depot to see you off, while with the apostle 
and the Savior, hundreds went with them outside the 
city walls to stone or crucify them.” 

There was a silence of minutes, and then the Fig- 
ure resumed: 

“With the light of Heaven and Truth : upon 
you, what are you to-night ?” 

“A hypoerite and a liar!” cried out the preacher, 
and burst into tears. 

The instant the Figure heard the sound of weeping, 
his whole manner changed and became full of tender- 
ness. Going softly to the door he admitted another 
white Form, and coming back to the bedside with the 
new visitor, stooped down over the penitent man of 
God, whose face was covered with his a and whis- 
pered: 

“Do you know me?” 

> Ves, 

“Who am I?” 

“Conscience.” 

“Yes, I am Conscience, your true friend. I have 
not desired to pain you needlessly; but to warn you.” 

“You have nearly broken my heart,” sighed the 


A NIGHT VISITOR. 269 


man of God; “but I know it was for my good, and that 
you have done right.” 

Conscience smiled approvingly and lovingly upon 
the man, and said: 

“God has sent some one else to see you, who bears a 
blessed message to your soul from Him.” 

“Who is it?’ asked the preacher, looking up. 

And the second white Form bent over him and 
pressed a kiss upon the tear-stained cheek, and replied: 

“My name is Mercy.” 

And the preacher’s face fairly glowed in the shadows 
of the room, while happy smiles and equally happy 
tears strove for mastery on the illumined countenance. 

And so, by and by, he fell asleep murmuring: 

“Blessed Savior! from this hour I will act, speak, 
write and do all things like Thee.” 

Conscience and Mercy stood a while looking at the 
tired, slumbering servant of God, smiled upon him 
and at each other, shook hands, and went to their own 
places. Meanwhile the preacher had sunk into a pro- 
found, refreshing sleep, such as God has promised His 
beloved. Every care was forgotten, the heart was at 
rest, and the faint reflection of a smile made the face 
look as if the light of childhood’s innocent, happy, 
sunny hours had fallen upon him once more. 


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